Word: lockjaw
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With few exceptions, the critical essays that make up most of The Vonnegut Statement are founded on the rustiest claptrap in literary exegesis. Moby Dick whale imagery, phrases like "an inversion of the objective correlative" and "eschatological imperatives" constantly threaten everyone with intellectual lockjaw. For one assistant professor, the idea of Dynamic Tension in Cat's Cradle evokes Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, although Charles Atlas' muscle-building method is more in keeping with Vonnegut's unpretentious style and sources...
Roebling was killed the month surveys for the bridge began. A docking ferry hit his foot, his toes were amputated (he refused anestheria), and he developed lockjaw after ignoring all medical advice...
...civilians who had crowded into it for sanctuary were killed. Since then, wounded civilians have been cared for in a pagoda in Phu Due. There are no beds and few mats; most patients lie on the dirt floor or on bundles of rags. A child died of lockjaw because of a shortage of tetanus serum. Her body lies twisted like a snake under a shroud of rags. Two feet away an old woman is dying of malnutrition. She had stayed in her bunker for well over a month, switching from boiled rice to rice soup as her reserves dwindled, then...
WHAT can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died of lockjaw? That she was tightlipped. And tongue-tied. That she loved Mao and Che, and brown rice sprinkled with soybeans and sunflower seeds. And me. She never told me what the order was, which somehow still bugs me. Family tradition was always to be numero uno, don't you know...
Despite his disregard for the preppy stereotype, Montgomery has apparently done a pretty good job of emulating it. There is no Middle American in his Locust Valley Lockjaw, and according to an acquaintance of his, "He's the kind of guy you find in Sakes Fifth Avenue the day after freshman registration buying striped ties and top-siders to replace his high school sweat shirt and basketball sneakers...