Word: oyster
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...least appreciated Roman of them all? While more militant Romans were battling the Cimbri along the Rhine toward the end of the 2nd century B.C. and the poet Lucilius was pouring out his satires, Sergius Orata was pouring his considerable fortune into his single passion-the cultivation of the oyster. The ups and downs of that bivalvular mollusk ever since are the subject of Novelist Clark's book-a witty blend of fact, fable and fine poetic nonsense...
Author Clark, wife of Novelist Robert Penn Warren, became an oyster addict while living in the village of Locmariaquer on the coast of Brittany, chief breeding ground of the world's most prized oyster. The Locmariaquer oyster is known to science as the Ostrea edulis. To the locals it is known simply as the plate (the flat one), to distinguish it from the bumpy Portuguese oyster, which is sometimes foisted off on innocent diners as a true edulis, and which ostreophiles regard as little better than a mussel or even a clam...
When she can muzzle her metaphors, Author Clark is a mine of oyster lore. Millions of years older than man, the oyster is "prolific to the point of indecency." Since oysters are hermaphrodites, a single oyster may be both a father and a mother, changing roles several times in the course of a year. In the best of all possible worlds, an oyster might live 15 years, but only one in 10,000 makes it to maturity. The tingle-snail can bore through the shell of a full-grown oyster and scoop out the meat in six hours. The starfish...
...gnawing doubt of self at the heart of clowning. Barbra Streisand could be a gawkish version of Charlie Chaplin's Tramp, except that all the Tramp usually wanted was a full bowl of soup, and the character Barbra plays wants the world for her pearl-filled oyster...
...killed; and though several hundred soldiers escaped in the bush, all but a handful were quickly recaptured. The exercise was directed by the commanding officer of the Tanganyikan forces, a Britisher who had escaped the mutiny on Monday and had been hiding in European homes in Dar's fashionable Oyster Bay area during the week...