Word: metaphoritis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...strikes the theme of his pet metaphor again. "I just don't think of people in departments as bushels of wheat--I think of them as a family. Would we reach a social optimum if we reconstructed our wives every year--as some people seem...
...opera, to the savage Indians upriver; to fulfill his dream, and with the Indians' help, he lugged a small riverboat across a narrow strip of land that separated two tributaries of the Amazon. It was a feat of autocracy and artistry, of engineering and enlightened madness-a readymade metaphor for Herzog's kind of film making. The movie would also be his first "big" production, with financial help from Coppola and with Jack Nicholson as the star...
...infamous, Updike style: tiny things described at great length. Rare is the reviewer over 30 who has not at least once twitted Updike for preciosity and overwriting. Yet he is not a showoff, as critics like Alfred Kazin have sometimes claimed ("a brilliant actionlessness ... the world is all metaphor"). In the service of his intense, precise idea of truth, Updike simply loads some moments in his fiction with more words and significance than they can bear. From a story in the 1960s, describing the fragrance that
...finish the job. And so he drives the laborers beyond their endurance. He steals food, then rations it. He intercepts calls and news from home "for their own good." He quarantines them from entertainment, and even from attending church. It takes no Soviet censor to find a political metaphor here: Nowak is the Polish statesman-Gierek or Kania or Jaruzelski-who must act the ruthless boss to satisfy his own ruthless boss. It is difficult, it is wrong, but it must be done to survive. Thus does the liberal turn totalitarian...
...book, Breaking the TV Habit (Scribners; $9.95), Wilkins describes the telltale signs and dangers of television addiction and offers a straightforward four-week program to break the habit without severe withdrawal symptoms. Addiction may be a metaphor, but the reality, according to Wilkins, is that among American children, television ranks second only to sleeping as a consumer of hours. The average American, both child and adult, watches more than six hours of television daily. By the age of 14, a devoted viewer will have witnessed 11,000 TV murders, claims Wilkins, and will digest 350,000 commercials before graduating from...