Word: payoff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...week after the return of the envoys, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, the White House is still waiting for that payoff. The Chinese leaders did promise not to sell missiles to Middle Eastern countries. That, however, was merely a repetition of a pledge first made more than a year ago. China also agreed to let a Voice of America reporter into the country for the first time since July. But if those are the only results of the Scowcroft-Eagleburger mission, it will not lower the criticism a decibel...
...problem, Robert Allan Ackerman's archly formal staging emphasizes ritual over a sense of place. Still, the two women establish an ever shifting power dynamic. In the last fantasy, when they embrace fondly in an imagined courtyard, their warmth and urgency enable the audience to share in an emotional payoff...
...while CHANCE's volunteers can never be certain their efforts are making a difference, sometimes the payoff is obvious...
...payoff can be enormous. As electronics manufacturers have discovered, the laws of economics at the micro level are as different as the laws of physics. A manufacturer might spend a small fortune putting hundreds of moving parts and circuits onto a single silicon chip. But when that chip goes into large-scale production and millions of copies are made, the economies of scale take over, and development costs virtually disappear...
Almost alone among his contemporaries, Malamud was equally gifted at the novel and short story. In some moods he preferred the short form: "In a few pages a good story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge -- not a bad payoff." All the stories salvaged here are good, and so is the payoff...