Word: repellantly
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...Wednesday captured the northern third of the rebel republic, they had done so for the most part without much of a fight. "Chechen forces were biding their time," says TIME Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge. The Chechens, whose president, Aslan Mashkadov, called Wednesday for a "holy war" to repel the Russian invaders, are likely to meet any Russian attempt to cross the Terek River in the mountainous south of Chechnya with fierce resistance. Meanwhile, Moscow rejected European Union offers to mediate in the crisis, insisting that Chechnya is a domestic matter. A domestic matter with a rapidly rising body...
Remarkably, Appelfeld has succeeded in creating a novel without a single like-able character. Karl's selfishness, his sexual attraction to his former nanny, his willingness to do anything for his promotion; all of these characteristics repel us from him, but Appelfeld never tells us any redeeming qualities Karl might have had. We cannot even sympathize with Gloria as a possible victim of Karl's desires. Appelfeld never tells us if Gloria returns Karl's love, and in the end she comes off as being simply weak. Strangely, Gloria possesses an almost robotic tendency to observe the Jewish traditions...
Dwelling in the sulfurously lighted basement apartment of Simon's house, Henry is the Devil--a devil, anyway--with a gift for inspiring those he does not repel. An apt pupil, Simon composes a long poem that some people hate ("Drop dead," reads a publisher's rejection note; "keep your day job") but others champion. Simon becomes a literary celebrity, and in gratitude to his mentor says he will insist that his publisher also issue Henry's opus. Then, alas, he reads...
...proclaim its delight at the prospect of the U.S.'s depleting its resources in a major land war in Asia. That prospect may seem less pleasing today. Where the Communists almost had victory within their grasp last spring, the U.S. now bars the way and stands ready to repel any other attempted aggression. Unless Peking and Hanoi withdraw from South Vietnam--and lose face throughout Asia--it is the Communists themselves who risk being bogged in wars that they can neither afford nor end. Their blunder came as no surprise." --Jan. 7, 1966, from Man of the Year profile...
...book's pages positively gush with effluvia. Scents, oils and secretions of the young and the old simultaneously fascinate and repel Turnbull. His obsession with these juices and their accompanying bodily phenomena, his scatological dreams, his fantasies of incontinence and impotence all reflect his growing loss of physical control. His physical disintegration makes all the more real the imminence of death and of obliteration. Watching with wonder the futile efforts of his energetic wife and his former business partners at garden-keeping and money-making respectively, he feels keenly his own life's ineffectuality and transience. "What is wrong with...