Word: moment
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...Nocturnes,” Ishiguro examines that dreaded moment in which people arrive at middle age and have to confront their mediocrity. Characters drift apart as they realize that they have not fulfilled their individual ambitions: the marriage between trophy wife Lindy Gardner and her fading American crooner husband unravels; the apprenticeship of a young Russian cellist under a woman who professes to be an accomplished musician dissolves; a struggling jazz musician, seeking notoriety, undergoes an unnecessary facelift and befriends Gardner while recovering from his surgery in a futile attempt to achieve celebrity...
...depiction of the confrontation with failure appears wanting, his examination of protective psychological mechanisms remains one of the strongest points of the collection, underscoring both life’s pathos and surrealism. Ishiguro examines the absurdity of how humans protect themselves from the outside world and the moment in which this protection begins to wear down. Eloise McCormack, the self-professed virtuoso cellist who coaches young Tibor on his technique, eventually confesses that she cannot play the cello. She justifies this by claiming that other, less-gifted teachers would have destroyed her innate gift if she had taken lessons with...
...scene that recasts this moment of blind, frozen protection in a hilariously surreal mode occurs when Steve and Lindy become friends after their plastic surgeries and wander around the surgeon’s building complex at night. At one point, they find themselves on the stage of a convention room by the catering table, when one of the organizers opens the curtains and comments, “It’s a man. With a bandaged head, wearing a night-gown. That’s all it is, I see it now. It’s just that he?...
...Though Mitchell changes the syntax considerably, the line breaks and enjambments are absolutely breathtaking. Where Snow maintains that the voice opens the mouth Mitchell has the mouth open first, then the line break, thereafter the cause is discerned. The Mitchell is exhilarating; we empathize for a moment with the Jüngling, we understand this overwhelming of sentiment, which makes the contraction of “it will end” (a much broader statement then “they end”) that much more moving in potency. It serves to note, additionally, that Mitchell maintains some semblance...
...Medvedev finally agreed to meet with the opposition leaders on Oct. 24. He clearly realized the gravity of the moment. "Let us not allow this to become the funeral of our democracy and our electoral system," Medvedev told the deputies. "Although it is true, I made a point to wear black today, because I knew you would be in the mood for a funeral." Three days later, Medvedev asked Churov to look into the opposition's claims. Then the President slipped back into his usual complicity. He said the elections had been "satisfactory" and that any claims to the contrary...