Word: merely
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...Lewis' popularity extends beyond the Borders children's section. This year HarperSanFrancisco, which publishes some of the best known of his dozens of adult titles, including Mere Christianity (a collection of those radio talks) and The Screwtape Letters (a set of funny-creepy faux missives from a senior devil to his nephew), sold 843,000 copies, twice as many as in 2001. Multiple books about Lewis debut annually; this year's crop features Jacobs' biography and Jack's Life (Broadman & Holman) by Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham. In 1947, a TIME cover story hailed Lewis as "one of the most influential...
...fronts: first, as a young and privileged Englishman in the dizzying boom-and bust-climate of Thatcherism; second, as a gay man at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Such high-stakes political, moral, and social issues could easily overpower a less skillful writer, turning the novel into mere sermon or satire. But Hollinghurst and his fictitious alter-ego are far too smart for that.Instead, we meet a brilliant, insecure Oxford grad with an exacting, reverential, and eventually obsessive eye for beauty, whether found in the heights of a Gothic cathedral, the curves of his first lover...
...lose.To portray a man whose daily life was practically a caricature—a persona of who he wanted to be—is far from easy. Anyone who takes on the high-pitched tones of Capote should be, presumably, relegated to parody or mere imitation. But Hoffman is the voice, capturing the pauses and drawn-out phrasing in the undertones of everything he says. Better still is the way he plays Capote’s manipulative tendencies against Capote’s natural charm, and, though it seems clichéd to say it, Hoffman deserves that Oscar nomination.The...
...Didion’s new book “The Year of Magical Thinking” answers with a resounding—though indirect—yes. While it is self-centered in the sense of being autobiographical, “Magical Thinking” elicits much more than mere pity or sympathy in the reader.“Magical Thinking” is Didion’s account of the year following her husband John Gregory Dunne’s death of “a sudden massive coronary event” on the evening of December...
...exactly is an uninformed person supposed to compare them? One might say that colleges must be judged subjectively or by how well they match individual preferences. But it’s difficult for prospective students to know what they want in a college, and so they are content with mere excellence. (It is for this very reason that many find themselves at Harvard.) Any measurement is inevitably incomplete, but any single way of looking at the world usually is. Yet if university rankings are conducted properly, they still have value, regardless of their limited perspective. The real rank offense...