Word: realisms
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Though odds are against him, there is a glimmer of hope in the person of Rene Preval. The 53-year-old Belgian-educated businessman comes to office burdened with a reputation as a hard-left radical but seems to approach the job with realism. He could not be more unlike the ethereal Aristide: practical, plainspoken, decisive. "I know we must translate democracy into improvements in everyday life," he told TIME shortly before his inauguration...
Clearly, the plot is an elaborate game: the challenge is to maneuver all these characters into the expected happy ending. Exactly how that comes to pass is, as one might expect, incredible; but opera was never famous for its realism. Suffice it to say that mothers are reunited with their long-lost children, people are locked in closets and jump out of windows, and there is plenty of opportunity for cross-dressing. Only the music justifies the brazen silliness of the story, and in this case, the trade is well worth making...
...with Midnight's Children, Rushdie's second novel, The Moor's Last Sigh feels rather like magic realism, Indian style. There are curses and prophecies and general supernatural occurences, but these are offered with something that feels like scepticism: the magical may also be coincidental. This sophisticated, even jaded approach to the exotic, the "Oriental", is Rushdie's singular gift. The novel's narrator, Moraes, shares this detachment: "Christians, Portuguese and Jews; Chinese tiles promoting godless views; pushy ladies, skirts-not-saris, Spanish shenanigans, Moorish crowns...can this really be India...
DIED. DUANE HANSON, 70, sculptor; of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; in Boca Raton, Florida. Hanson's popular, Pop-influenced sculptures captured humanity at its most humdrum--a gawking tourist or a burdened shopper, each life-size, dressed in real clothing and rendered with such realism that passers-by were often unaware they were in the company of art, not life...
...British mini-series about a group of prostitutes being stalked by a serial killer worked well as a thriller but even more effectively as a grim portrait of life in an impoverished English town. Cathy Tyson (Mona Lisa) played a beautiful streetwalker with an affecting, un-Pretty-Woman-ish realism...