Word: mock
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hobby House. The gifts to Kelley came to light as the Levi-ordered investigation probed the activities of the FBI's exhibit section, which prepares courtroom mock-ups of crime scenes. Dubbed "the Hobby House" or "Freeload Inc." by some agents, it had long provided minor home improvements for top FBI officials. As agents told of this work, John P. Dunphy, the head of the section, agreed to talk freely to the Justice Department about more serious misuse of Government funds and services. In return, the Justice Department permitted him to plead guilty to the minor indiscretion of having...
Many readers now expect their slice of life to be served up with a side order of irony or existential razzmatazz.They will not find it in The Easter Parade. Yates does not condescend to his heroines; he refuses to strike attitudes about their failures or mock their limitations. "I'm almost 50 years old," Emily says at the end, "and I've never understood anything in my whole life...
...Chilean army arrested by the junta after he tried to resign his commission: "I was tortured with electric shock, forced to live in underground dungeons so small that in one I could only stand up and in the other only lie down. I was beaten incessantly, dragged before a mock firing squad, and regularly told that my wife and child and relatives were suffering the same fate...
...apprentice teachers (juniors or seniors). With about as many routines as Henny Youngman-and his speed to boot-the apprentice whizzes around the class getting students to repeat what they have learned. The pace demands that each student make 65 responses an hour. Drills include imaginary telephone conversations, mock press conferences with "visiting dignitaries" and a wide variety of word games. The apprentice teacher, in effect, acts as a living language lab, snapping his fingers at each student for responses. Rassias' instructions: "Never let your students forget that you are ecstatic when they do well and confounded when they...
Beneath all this, though, the novel wanders in search of a missing profundity. Outside of their mock family ties, the characters have neither significant pasts nor coherent motives. The ranks of terrorists may indeed be filled with such hollow, existential punks, but a novelist can hardly let it go at that. Theroux himself cannot seem to decide whether their emptiness is contemptible or piteous. And since they contemplate violence as an end rather than a means, they lack the framework of a political cause that might define them...