Word: mme
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...AGED Mme. Simenon lies dying in a hospital. Her son, the author, comes to her side, and discovers that in spite of his 70 years he doesn't understand her. In the week that passes before death arrives, he tries to penetrate to the "truth" of his mother and of their bond, to "solve" that cliched jigsaw puzzle of filial love. Sitting silently across from her, he tortures himself with questions: "Why did my mother distrust me?"; "Why did she marry my father?"; "What was her youth like?"; "What did she think when...
...mother, it is imprecise: she is "highstrung," or "willful," or "impressionable." Once he goes so far as to describe her as the "cat's canary" of the family. This murky cliche is repeated several times, as if to emphasize that it is a "key" to solving the mystery of Mme. Simenon. By page 90 (the book is 91 pages), Simenon is ready to terminate his garbled investigation, now thoroughly redundant, and give us his solution. It seems, finally, that she "needs to be good", in spite and in face of the world, and this is the reason she acted...
...always so. Princes and potentates once treated the toilet seat as an extension of the throne; it was from the gilded cabinet that France's Louis XIV announced his engagement to Mme. de Maintenon. (Even Lyndon Johnson was not above conducting affairs of state while moving his bowels.) Indeed, there are few places so conducive to intellectual exercise as a well-appointed bathroom. Lord Chesterfield advised his son that he "knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged...
...different side door, the head of the metallurgical workers union barges in. Excusing themselves, the American visitors pass through a corridor where a dozen more labor leaders are milling around, accompanied by four or five dozen bodyguards. Ten days later−so much for the dynamic social compact−Mme. Peron from her sickbed orders a 15% general wage increase...
...President Taha Moheddin Maruf. More mobile, obviously, is the Chairman's wife, Chiang Ching, 61, who surfaced last week in Shansi province to make her first public speech since the chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution more than five years ago. After addressing a conference on Chinese agriculture, Mme. Mao then showed her proletarian stuff by donning peasant clothing and setting to work shoveling the good earth from a nearby irrigation ditch...