Word: matter-of-fact
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...matter-of-fact dismissal of what appeared to be a fairly serious challenge to the prosecution's case is just one of many reminders that the Arthur Road jail is a long way from the tidy proceedings of "Law and Order." The court allowed the prosecution to present its opening arguments, for example, even though the newly appointed defense attorney had not yet read the 11,000-page charge sheet. (The judge acknowledged that he still hasn't finished the whole thing.) Qasab does not speak English, but there is no Urdu translator to explain the proceedings...
...spit on and insult Senyor on his death bed, instead closes the dying man’s eyes so that he does not witness his own humiliation. This ought to be a moment of profound pathos. But in the midst of the barrage of grotesque images, its matter-of-fact account scarcely registers. Perhaps the novel’s greatest weakness is its inability to truly create characters. Leave aside the enigmatic narrator; the other characters in the book exist only as prose descriptions, devoid of any psychological complexity or, even, thought. This is not typically a genre convention...
...considered citizens of Burma, they cannot work in the public sector as teachers or soldiers or doctors. Nor can they attend university in Arakan's capital, Sittwe, where communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims flared eight years ago. The villagers' tone when describing their plight was matter-of-fact, as if they were complaining of a rainstorm or a bad case of influenza. To marry, some Rohingya must sign a document promising not to bear more than two children - a regulation that presumably ensures the number of Muslim inhabitants of Arakan doesn't mushroom faster than the Buddhist population. Burmese...
...getting the goods. When he lays out the three declarations of guilt he wants Nixon to make on Watergate, he concludes, "And I think unless you say it, you're gonna be haunted for the rest of your life." His tone is not threatening or maudlin, just the matter-of-fact prediction of someone who, in a conversation with a former U.S. president, is totally in command...
...grew up vigilant because it’s a divided society. My poetry on the whole was earth-hugging, but then I began to look up rather than keep down. I think it had to do with a sense that the marvelous was as permissible as the matter-of-fact in poetry. That line is from a poem called “The Gravel Walks,” which is about heavy work—wheeling barrows of gravel—but also the paradoxical sense of lightness when you’re lifting heavy things. I like...