Word: naveled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Solomon has his own burden, some trauma from which he must free himself if finally, he is to move beyond the mental confines of the ghetto. Only Milkman's aunt Pilate is free. She was odd from birth--she never had the choice of conforming, because she has no navel, no connection to even family. She is eccentric, living outside respectability with her daughter and her daughter's daughter, off the proceeds of her homemade wine. Pilate, in her unkempt and mystical way, is not bound by the conventions that trap ordinary people, so that she has less distance...
Since current fiction is still overpopulated with navel gazers, it is refreshing to find characters who are willing to stare instead at newspaper headlines and stock quotations. But the relentless public-spiritedness of everyone in The Ice Age sometimes seems almost comical in its portentousness. With no apparent irony, Drabble describes one of Alison's conversations with Keating: "She spoke of the state of the nation." During a get-together between Keating, his ex-wife and their children, "they talked of his father's funeral, of the sale of the old house, of the problems of squatters...
...Wilson cartoons, Gary Gilmore jokes, National Lampoon raised to the nth degree--Paco took it all in and somehow managed to keep from gagging. His favorite, though, was a cartoon from Playboy or Penthouse or some other urbane excuse for a glossy fold-out with a staple in her navel. Wherever it was from, Paco didn't remember, he simply knew some friend had given it to him one night at a fund-raiser for the United Farm Workers which he attended because after all, his parents were grape pickers back in California. The friend said the cartoon was appropriate...
...Star is Born shows the beautiful people in rare form. Not once during the film does either star have a shirt buttoned above the navel. The clothes are mostly of satin, sequins and silk. Such affectations suggest a hairdresser's touch. In fact, Jon Peters, Streisand's hairdresser and husband, produced the film--and her permanent looks great...
...Humphrey's recovery proceeds as expected-two to three weeks in the hospital (at $350 a day, largely covered by his federal medical insurance), a month or more of convalescence-he should be able to resume his political career. Except for the pouch, the navel-to-pubis scar and the virtually inevitable impotence that results from such surgery, Humphrey will have few reminders of his ordeal on the operating table. He will be able to eat whatever he wants, work vigorously and even engage in such noncontact sports as golf or tennis...