Word: macguffin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stands before half time. About the time a viewer might be tempted to switch to a shopping channel, the anchors would go to a replay of the ceremonious delivery of the mysterious brown envelope, which contains either a knife or a red herring. It's as riveting as the MacGuffin in a Hitchcock thriller...
...MACGUFFIN by Stanley Elkin (Simon & Schuster; 283 pages; $19.95). Bobbo Druff, 58, is a washed-up pol serving time as city commissioner of streets in a minor-league U.S. metropolis. His wife of 36 years is going deaf; his son Mikey, 30, still lives at home; and his health -- after a heart bypass, four instances of a collapsed lung and extensive circulatory problems in his legs -- is not robust. Understandably he concludes that the "world is getting away from me, I think...
...invents a MacGuffin, the term Alfred Hitchcock used to describe anything that gives spurious meaning to a plot, or, as Bobbo explains, "whatever got slipped into Cary Grant's pocket without his knowledge or that Jimmy Stewart picked up by mistake when the girl switched briefcases on him." The MacGuffin that Bobbo comes up with is a conspiracy to get rid of him that involves everyone from his bosses to his son's deceased Lebanese girlfriend to his limousine drivers...