Word: novelness
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Many critics have written more eloquently than I ever could about what makes this novel great. It shows in exquisite and often painful detail how our adult personalities are shaped by our own choices (which may not be as free as we think they are) and by powerful forces beyond our control. Maugham has a remarkable ability to evoke a vivid, realistic world with seemingly simple prose. Warning: not a happy fun book...
...reads like a spy novel, but in The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, author Shane Harris lays out the U.S. government's real-life efforts to see and hear more in the face of growing terrorist threats. He pays particular attention to Total Information Awareness (TIA), a post-9/11 research project spearheaded by John Poindexter, once President Reagan's National Security Adviser. Harris, a reporter for National Journal, spoke to TIME about Poindexter, the fate of TIA and the state of surveillance in America. He didn't object, mind you, to being recorded...
...American Pastoral” is my favorite novel of all time, and Theo grossly oversimplified a very small portion of it. Philip Roth does anything but portray the American Dream and suburban life as a straightforward, dismal existence. Perhaps if the reviewer had read further, he would have appreciated the Swede’s reaction to his daughter blowing up the local post office. Roth definitely explores the “inner and outer lives of the father and [daughter],” for which Theo praises Cormac McCarthy...
Instead of sensing an “aftertaste of tired irony,” I was deeply affected by Roth’s novel and have reflected on it for years after my first reading. Coincidently, I began to read McCarthy’s “The Road” and never finished it; however, I would never write a review without completing it. Give “American Pastoral” a chance and don’t be so lazy...
...Hinkfuss, the challenge of combining two related fields with frequently opposing views was an interesting and novel experience...