Word: ordeal
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...PAGE NOVEL THAT CONcludes with 100 pages of annotation and calls itself Infinite Jest (Little, Brown; $29.95) is doubly intimidating. First, there is its length, which promises an ordeal like driving across Texas without cruise control. Second, the title itself hints that the joke may be on the reader. By definition, infinite means no punch line...
...JOHN TESTRAKE, 68, pilot; of cancer; in St. Joseph, Missouri. Testrake was the captain of the TWA jet hijacked to Beirut in 1985. Footage of him amiably chatting with reporters from his cockpit while a gun-toting terrorist hovered about him captured the absurd horror of the 17-day ordeal...
...took in stray dogs, fixed meals for sick friends and called his mother every day. And those pain-killers she needed after her caesarean section kept her from answering questions sooner. All these justifications were marinated in copious tears and stirred slowly until everyone but her was numb. The ordeal set a record in the talk-till-they-drop genre of damage control, easily exceeding the 90-minute event held by Geraldine Ferraro. Afterward, slightly more people believed Waldholtz than before, demonstrating that the myth of women as frail and financially inept persists--even if, like Enid, they have spent...
Dole is uncomfortable talking about that ordeal and does so only sporadically. But his life's story is a compelling tale, an up-from-nowhere American saga, and the video accomplishes the political need to tell it. Offstage, Dole admits he thinks about his past almost every day. "Yep, it's true," he says, "for a long time I really thought I'd never get married; that I'd never amount to anything; that I'd have to live off some pension or maybe even sell pencils on a street corner." Having recovered beyond anyone's expectations--he almost died...
Deliverance at last for pretty Ariana after her ordeal. Kidnapped from her classroom by violent outlaws. Imprisoned in the wild with only a slop pail. Forced to endure the pitch-black terrors of a deep cave. Safe at last in her aunt's warm house, she gives thanks. "How wonderful," she muses, "to know that God never lost control...