Word: propeller
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Television is lowbrow--our electronic lowest common denominator--and it has none of the charm (like, say, detective novels) to propel it into the realm of any sort of artistic appreciation. It's not just the game shows, and it's not just those godawful pre fabricated housewives choosing between potatoes or stuffing or sinus drainer. It goes beyond that, somehow. There's always been a certain embarrassment about television, as if at its center were some yawning pit, some frivolous darkness upon which we can project the worst of our adolescent self-images...
Dietz of course, is elated that his prodigy will be joining other stellar incoming freshman like Marybeth Linzmeier and Stephanie Elkins at Stanford next year, and he hopes that this new blood will help propel the Cardinals past the Texas Longhorns next year in the AIAW Championships. Hurt by the mid-season retirement of backstroke queen Linda Jezek, and the physical ailments of Janet Buchan, the Stanford aquawomen just missed regaining their national title in Columbia. South Carolina last month...
Such passages are rarely dull, but they do produce a peculiar lifelessness in the novel as a whole. There is little to propel the reader forward except the expectation of more information. Vidal provides a multitude of incidents but no strong plot to bind them together. Cyrus abjures suspense; he has the habit of introducing characters by telling what finally happens to them first. Aside from the old man's large memory, Creation is unified by a single irony: Cyrus tells of his search for religious certainty to the person who will one day become an eminent philosopher...
...that and, to a startling degree, succeeds. English Author D.M. Thomas, 46, creates an intensely private heroine to whom extraordinarily public things happen. During the course of her fictional life, Lisa Erdman, a modestly talented opera singer of Polish and Ukrainian descent, is forced to make two journeys that propel her around the perimeter of 20th century imagination. She is treated for sexual hysteria by Sigmund Freud in Vienna and, years later, murdered by Nazi soldiers at Babi...
...floor, slinky, often inconspicuous. By the end of the first half, he had scored more than 20 points, and hardly anyone paid attention. But in the second half, he was unstoppable and eminently noticeable, hitting from all angles to run his game total to 45 points and to propel his Eagles...