Word: mordant
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Didion as a rule uses her self-dramatizations with an artist's instinctive discretion. She is an alert and subtle observer, with a mordant intelligence and a sense of humor with touches of Evelyn Waugh in it. She offers a lethal description of fatuous Hollywood political chatter. " 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' some one said to me at dinner not long ago, and before we had finished our fraises des bois, he had advised me as well that 'no man is an island.' " The White Album is full...
...heroes, Judson is not blind to their egomanias and foibles. Watson is "markedly bright and never accustomed to hide the fact." Linus Pauling, a fount of chemical wis dom and occasional foolishness, has "un quenchable self-confidence." Biochemist Erwin Chargaff, bypassed by the DNA revolution, is "the man of mordant dissent." But in the main, the author is content to take the role of acolyte, bombarding his gifted tutors with questions, some incisive, others pointedly rhetorical. As Judson plays student to Nobel Laureates Crick and Perutz, so does the reader, who, if patient enough, can gain an understanding and appreciation...
...truly comprehend the vocabulary of science. Thomas Pynchon made physical laws part of the structure of Gravity's Rainbow, and science-fiction novelists routinely construct their speculative entertainments from the hard-and software of physics and chemistry. Among the masters of the genre is Stanislaw Lem, a mordant, satirical Pole whose novels and stories have been praised by readers as disparate as Critic Leslie Fiedler and Russian Cosmonaut Gherman Titov. Lem has written nearly 30 books, and his European sales are in the millions. (Ten of his works have been translated into English; most of them were published...
...this community for eight years I have come to expect some insentient and contemptuous treatment of the weak and vulnerable: Mr. Dalquist's effort marks an all-time low in unabashed tastelessness and insensitivity. The texts accompanying his photos are reprehensible examples of a social consciousness so primitive and mordant that they should embarrass the sensitivities of this community more than they enflame the anger of the residents of the South End. As for Mr. Dalquist and the Editorial staff of The Crimson, I hope that maturity will bring a modicum of circumspection and compassion which their breeding...
Like those two characters in a Jerusalem Post cartoon, most Israelis last week seemed to be exploring a new economic landscape with little joy, a dash of mordant wit and a surprising lack of panic. It hardly seemed possible, but after nearly 30 years of semisocialism-and all the government controls and subsidies that went with it-the brave new world of laissez-faire capitalism so abruptly introduced by Premier Menachem Begin began exploding before their eyes. The Israeli pound, shorn of its artificially pegged value, quickly plunged 46% against the dollar, from 10.3 to 15.2. Prices of essential consumer...