Word: procrusteans
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...every Chinese knows that without Chairman Mao there would be no new China." At the same time, he has not restrained the official press from indicting the shaping hand of Chinese Communism for "subjectivity, one-sidedness, hauteur and lack of humility." Most cunning of all, Deng has stretched the procrustean bed of Maoism to fit his own needs. By adapting such Maoist phrases as "seeking truth from facts" and "the mass line" to his own purposes, he has given the impression that he has been more faithful to "the thought of Mao" than the Great Helmsman himself...
...living U.S. artists. There are a few good things in it, notably a Robert Motherwell entitled In Plato 's Cave I, an exquisitely subtle geometrical painting by Agnes Martin, and some sculptures by Joel Shapiro and H.C. Estermann. But the art has been jammed into a Procrustean set of categories - "cultural irony," "narrative art," "objecthood" and so on. It all comes out looking pedagogical and unreal. To read Art Historian Sam Hunter laboring to convince himself and others that Andy Warhol (represented here by one 14-year-old painting) is really a narrative artist, although "nothing actually happens...
Twitching Ganglia. Exceptions to this procrustean rule are rare enough to be newsworthy. Lisa Alther's Kinflicks is enjoying a first printing of 30,000 copies, is a forthcoming alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the subject of considerable prepublication hyperbole. When the ganglia of the New York literary world begin to twitch in this manner, it is a sure sign that something more than literary merit is at work. First books by unknowns do not become events simply because they are good. Frequently, as Mae West once observed in another context, goodness has nothing...
...Napoleon focuses on one of the most complex and ideologically riven epochs in history. Unfortunately, it is a period that fits awkwardly into the Durants' Procrustean formula. Merely to introduce Bonaparte into destiny's pages requires a recapitulation of the entire French Revolution. The Durants compress that cataclysm to 152 pages-an entertaining but misshapen account. The causes of the infamous Terror are summed up in a brief section, leaving the reader reeling under a scattershot assault of dates and statistics. The guillotine devours French leaders at such a bewildering pace that the list of names often reads...
...elegantly straight-forward approach and his vast knowledge of literature is something you will have to experience in person. Perhaps the real beauty of Northrop Frye is that be can't be classified. As he says, "those who are incapable of distinguishing between a recognition of archetypes and a Procrustean methodology which forces everything into a prefabricated scheme would be well advised to leave the whole question alone." Since Frye is something of an archetype himself, maybe it's better to let him make his own unified impact on you today...