Word: self
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...call it The Counterbook." Fat chance, or so it seemed at the time. For nearly 30 years, Roth had been hearing accusations that he was merely a closet biographer, that his heroes, whether named David Kepesh, Peter Tarnopol, Alexander Portnoy or Nathan Zuckerman, were simply transparent disguises for their self-obsessed creator. Finding that denials did nothing to stem such charges, Roth responded by heaping coals on controversy. Did some readers accuse him of anti-Semitism? Very well. Roth gave them and the world Portnoy's Complaint, a long hilarious howl of ethnic self-laceration. Were not three novels about...
...There are no second acts in American lives," Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked. But in the lives of American writers, there often is one, and it is the second act of Long Day's Journey into Night: a downward spiral of drink, disillusion and self-destructiveness. Jean Stafford followed just such a pattern, all the more regrettably because her first act was so full of energy % and promise. Fresh from a Colorado upbringing, she married Poet Robert Lowell and at 29 published the best seller Boston Adventure. Other marriages and other books followed, and so did poor health and a passel...
...waves of protesters who marched 20 abreast through the capital. Roman Catholic priests and nuns paraded behind a banner proclaiming JESUS LOVES DEMOCRACY. Government employees brandished a MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS sign, while retired military men proudly unfurled a banner reading ASSOCIATION OF FORMER COMMANDERS AND OLD COMRADES. From self-identified housewives to state factory workers and students, all were there to demand...
...like a fifth-grader trying to explain his missing arithmetic homework. When reporters accosted him at his Virginia home while he was emptying garbage, Quayle reacted with evident anger ("I'm getting a little bit indignant about one bum rap after another . . .") but sounded petulant rather than persuasive. His self-confidence has grown since then, though his overeager, puppet-like demeanor still reminds some critics of Howdy Doody...
...students, then at least for the academy. Only by occupying high moral ground have the nation's universities maintained their respected position in American society. By debasing its actions to the level of a self-interested corporation, Harvard is rapidly losing its moral integrity. Venturing into the real world is an irrevocable step, and Harvard had better come to ethical terms with its own practices...