Word: reader
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...memoir, For the Record, former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan wastes no time before dropping his biggest bombshell. "Because actions that would otherwise bewilder the reader cannot be understood in its absence," writes Regan in a foreword, "I have revealed in this book what was probably the most closely guarded domestic secret of the Reagan White House...
Perhaps the American space program, currently languishing under a scarcity of both public money and goodwill, is a victim of a President who believes more can be learned about the heavens from a back alley palm reader than from an orbiting telescope. Perhaps Reagan believes that exploring the stars will upset the delicate balance of planetary influence. It seems that as belief in astrology rises, belief in astronomy is sure to fall. That is the kind of harm Reagan's connection with pseudoscience can inflict on this nation...
Whereas Dukakis is contained, Kitty spills over with emotion. When she sneaks a cigarette, she will often say, "Don't tell Michael!" On nights before primary votes, she does not sleep, and she is a devoted reader of tracking polls, which he largely ignores. High-strung and hyper, she speaks in a quick, clipped cadence, like someone eager to get off the phone in order to make another call. The two complement each other. It may well be true that the only person who knows the real Kitty is Michael and that the only person who knows the real Michael...
...Rommel. She goes at her assignment with gusto, typing in the jeep, pausing to shake the sand out of her typewriter. No wonder a weary colleague asks her to quit showing off. But soon she meets the love of her life, a tank commander named Tom Southern. The savvy reader of war fiction knows at once that earnest Tom will be dead within 50 pages, but Claudia is launched on a splendidly grand passion. And when finally the disastrous word comes from the front, she shows her saving grace: guts...
CALVINO tackles questions that have puzzled the driest and most difficult literary critics of the century, but he does not share their obsession for inventing or redefining terms. He does not bully the reader with tortuous grammar, or leave gaps and ambiguities in his logic as examples of the defects in language itself; his sentences are clear and simple. "There is a lightening of language," Calvino posits, "whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the meaning itself takes on the same rarefied consistency...