Word: man
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With each chapter, Beard discards the unwanted pieces of his former life in order to strive for some higher plane of personal or professional achievement. Beard is “a man of science” with “an automatic respect for internal consistency.” He knows truth to be “impregnable,” but he also knows that he can abandon his old life in order to inhabit his own reality. Beard believes that after learning “the tricks of managing, of simply being” he will reach...
...comes to a close, Beard is forced to confront the various deceptions and half-truths that have defined his life. A chameleon, Beard nevertheless begins to lose control of his relationships, of the image he projects on the world, and of his own beliefs and emotions. The man who shunned commitment and love in favor of status, pleasure, and freedom realizes that the only true solace resides in the personal relationships that endure life’s changes. McEwan’s writing becomes increasingly fatalistic and forlorn as the novel progresses, and Beard realizes that even...
...September 3, a man visits a small dark room in New York’s Museum of Modern Art to witness “24 Hour Psycho”—a video installation by Douglas Gordan exhibited during the summer of 2006—as he has supposedly done every day. As Gordan’s title implies, Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal film has been slowed, and the man relishes the new perspective, the ability to circle the projection screen, scrutinizing and observing in a typically unattainable way. Two men—one old, one young?...
...novel’s final section takes place on September 4. A woman arrives on this day, stands beside the man to watch the film. “She said, ‘What would it be like, living in slow motion?’ If we were living in slow motion, the movie would be just another movie. But he didn’t say this.’” By this day, the movie’s slowness no longer lends him clarity; he can’t be certain of the details he?...
Minutes later, the man tells the woman that as a young child he would often multiply numbers in his head. She responds that she would watch the ways lips formed words, and could decipher their messages without hearing: “The face had brightened slightly when he talked about the numbers he did in his head as a kid. Not brightened but sort of loosened, her eyes showing interest. But the story wasn’t true. He did not multiply large numbers in his head, ever. This was something he said sometimes because he thought it would help...