Word: pale
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...newest Maconderos can be found in Of Love and Other Demons (Knopf; 147 pages; $21). Their literary roots are unmistakable. The Marquis de Casalduero is "a funereal, effeminate man, as pale as a lily because the bats drained his blood while he slept." His powerhouse wife Bernarda imports and resells flour and sleeps with the help. Their daughter Maria has rejected her European origins for the Yoruban language and ornaments of her African servants. Added to this New World mix are Abrenuncio, a Portuguese-Jewish physician suspected of necromancy, and Father Cayetano Delaura, a young priest with a thirst...
...union argument, which was so utterly central and intractable it had to turn violent. The very meaning of American civilization was at issue. The blast in Oklahoma City, though horrific and indelible, may have been very much in the American grain, but it occurred entirely outside the civilization's pale, at the delusional margins...
...flight out, Snepp saw "fiery stitching in the plastic window across from me" and realized it was ground fire. "The chopper groped for altitude as the motors wailed in protest. A small radar screen behind the pilot's seat began pulsing with a pale green glow, converting the navigator's face into a ghoulish mask. For three or four minutes the tracers continued reaching up for us, slowly burning out as they fell short ... I thought to myself, How absurd. To be shot down...
...Scottish comedian Billy Connely once started a show, to much laughter and applause, by asking, "Isn't `A Whiter Shade of Pale' the most pretentious piece of crap you've ever heard in your life?" He's half right. Procol Harem's famous ditty (and only hit) has always been annoyingly obscure. But it's also strangely beautiful. Lennox's eerie modern version of the song is almost an improvement on the overblown original...
...censure the final clubs to prevent this sort of philistine behavior from repeating itself, it couldn't. In breaking off all ties to the clubs, the University also relinquished any means of controlling them. In doing so, the University hoped to marginalize the clubs by removing them beyond the pale of the Harvard community...