Word: oneself
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TODAY, HOWEVER, we are encouraged to look for greatness only within ourselves. Self-perfection used to be the work of a lifetime. Today, it is what happens after a weekend at the fat farm. Character used to mean demanding more of oneself than one could expect of others. Today, it is riding one's biorhythms to a new high of self-awareness. Being a hero used to involve the self-discipline needed to overcome daunting odds. In our post-mood ring society, being a hero is being yourself...
...incurable disease called AIDS -- acquired immunodeficiency syndrome -- has cast a shadow over the American sexual landscape. Since AIDS is chiefly transmitted through sex, it is forcing partners to a painful re-examination of their bedroom practices. The heedless abandon of Lawrencian lovers begins to seem dangerous and irresponsible, for oneself and for others. Instead of a transfixed gaze, lovers may feel they have to give each other a detailed grilling on present health and past liaisons...
...love derives from the Greek eros, meaning longing. Love presupposes a recognition of one's own incompleteness; it is a passionate search for completion. Modern man, however, is satisfied with himself. He is endlessly instructed and has come to believe that one must, at all accounts, feel good about oneself--as an individual...
...from the maybe affair -- what they term "very good" is not just his lithe body or their rendering but the feeling of being finally at peace within one's own mind, that house of many mansions. For an artist and perhaps for everyone, Gurney implies, building a relationship with oneself is at least as crucial -- and as complex -- as coming to terms with the world...
...this novel that Roth's detractors will probably dislike. Nathan, a self-conscious fellow, does not allow the reader to forget that the words on the page are made up, inventions: "Being Zuckerman is one long performance and the very opposite of what is thought of as being oneself." So much for sincere, straight-from-the-shoulder storytelling. People who want to know what really happens in a work of fiction, a peculiar but widespread desire, are going to find themselves bewildered. Only one incontestable fact can be gleaned from the book: The Counterlife got written...