Word: often
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...imagination on display here is Watterson's, not Calvin's. Watterson became an editorial cartoonist in Cincinnati after graduating from Kenyon College, and even then his cartoons had an element of the fantastic in them. He has shown a dozen worlds that Calvin inhabits, and often the joy in the strip comes from simply being on an alien planet with Calvin, instead of laughing at his wisecracks...
Bellow's book is a first-class mystery--and that's not a compliment. True, the plot could be called a mystery in the standard literary sense, but the book's theme, purpose and often its characters are enigmas themselves...
...first four are--like Updike's physical flaws--easily forgiven. The self-consciousness often comes as a wryness, a repetition of amusing bits of personal history which balance the self-importance with a likeable self-deprecation...
...linking the essays, Updike gives readers a full picture of his life. This format allows him to move from a recapitulation of important events to the less obvious, but often more relevant, influences on his personality...
...that respect, CFE is different from its variously initialed cousins SALT, START and INF, which dealt with the arsenals of Armageddon: missiles and bombs that are too unconventional to use. The control of nuclear arms is part of the larger, thoroughly laudable, but often abstract exercise of fine-tuning the balance of terror so as to make it a bit more balanced and a bit less terrible. CFE, by contrast, deals with real weapons, things that actually hurt people: a tank that can crush bodies on a town square; high explosives not measured in kilotons but still able to destroy...