Word: phrasings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...THERE YOU go again. "That catchy expression sealed Jimmy Carter's fate in 1980, as his Republican opponent skillfully used it to spotlight the incumbent's evasiveness and misrepresentation. Now, it seems. Ronald Reagan's clever turn of phrase has come back to haunt him. Last week's presidential press conference was only the most recent case in point...
...will. Sheed is one of the wittiest novelists, capable of turning out presumptive romans à clef like Office Politics (about a certain liberal magazine or magazines) and Max Jamison (about a certain theater critic or critics). In the new book he mixes the storyteller's phrase with the historian's acuity: "The '20s did not entirely take place in the '20s"; President Ford is "like a relative you have to visit now and then, with nothing much to report. You know, he's still working at Prudential or Tool & Dye"; William F. Buckley...
Much of Levitation presents Ozick in the role of a woman wonder-rabbi spreading paradox and fantasy. She tries too hard. Fantasy requires a softer touch and more control than are found in these stories. Some of Ozick's figurative language is spell-breaking. The phrase "suckled the Nazi boot" seems to have dropped from a punk rock lyric. A "transient mirage" that teases the "medulla oblongata" is not only overwrought but inappropriate for this part of the brain...
First, there was his religion. Most present day Americans must have trouble appreciating the peculiar horrors of turn-of-the-century Prague for a Jew. "Anti-Semitism," a phrase now used to describe segregated country clubs, meant frenzied riots and accusations of ritual murder. And since the Kafkas were doing their best to assimilate, feeling a meaningful religious identity was (until relatively late in his life) almost impossible for Franz. Second, there was his nationality (German), making him an outsider twice removed while in Prague. And then there was his father. Hayman stresses Kafka's relationship with his father...
...racist overtones, but has nonetheless retained an air of condescension. Its most neutral usage, suggested by Newton, is "the art of those peoples who have remained until recent times at an early technological level, who have been oriented toward the use of tools but not machines." The key phrase is "until recent times"-without it, most European culture up to about 1600 could fairly be called primitive. Above all, the word cannot mean crude or inarticulate. Few European medieval ivory carvings are as exquisitely realized, in detail and in the round, as the Met's ivory Bini mask...