Word: second-hand
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...then established himself as the first of the modern American assassins. Though full of fustian about his love for the Confederacy (he managed to avoid fighting for it, or even living in it, during the Civil War), Booth was clear-headed and precise about the psychic rewards and second-hand renown that come with dispatching a famous man. "What a glorious opportunity for a man to immortalize himself by killing Abraham Lincoln!" he remarked two years before his crime...
...foregoing any depiction of the regime's oppression, Ward forces A Time of Fire to rely on second-hand reminiscences of terror, retellings too perfunctory to arouse anger or motivate her characters. The leader of the village insurrection, Rodrigo (William Sakas), is simply introduced as a revolutionary--and the audience learns only later of the seemingly de rigueur murder of his family that sparked his attack on the state. Rodrigo's pat revolutionary rhetoric seems to spring from nowhere, and Sakas lacks the driving intensity that could salvage his character and make it more vivid and commanding...
...circulation of 300,000, the novel caused a sensation as much for its scenes of debauchery as for its virulent antiSemitism. Unfavorable reviews, which criticized the book for its non-Marxist attitudes and hostile treatment of Jews, merely piqued readers' interest. Not only are black market second-hand copies of Our Contemporary selling at $150, but typewritten copies of a longer, unexpurgated text of At the Last Frontier are being passed from hand to hand...
Ullman, who teaches English at Tufts and writes jazz criticism for The New Republic, has padded his book with stock appreciations of the recent dead-- Joe Venuti, Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. These great artists certainly merit our attention, but Ullman's second-hand tributes east little light on the jazz life. The real meat of Jazz Lives lies in the words of its less celebrated subjects. Many readers will find most of the names unfamiliar, but none of them are second-rate, and they speak with authority and often with charm. Only remember that every musician in this book...
...success in dealing with certain issues--energy and affirmative action--has done little to change a national reputation based largely on his personality and symbolic rejection of the prequisites of office. Stressing trivia, he has become a master of the cosmetic solution--his new Plymouth cost more than the second-hand limousine he traded...