Word: self
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gunshots and explosions. Any actor deserves sympathy when his love interest is sequestered from him, his nemeses are without human interest, his potential allies are all idiots, and the only sensible figure on the scene (Reginald Veljohnson) is always a walkie-talkie away. Still, Willis' presence is whiny and self-involved, and it is a ludicrous error to have him stop to confess past insensitivities before effecting his wife's climactic rescue. That is not the dramatically opportune moment to go Moonlighting...
Such passages, the self-abasements of a clearly superior partner, make painful reading. But Wharton's love letters are stirring in other ways. She could discreetly hint at sexual arousal intensified by social constraint: "You can't come into the room without my feeling all over me a ripple of flame." Writhing under Fullerton's sporadic indifference, she could summon up reserves of anger and pride: "What you wish, apparently, is to take of my life the inmost & uttermost that a woman -- a woman like me -- can give, for an hour, now & then, when it suits you; & when the hour...
...playing the role of a country singer. But I'd rather be starting now than ending now." Both women were brought up in Texas; however, where Oslin's writing and performing are foursquare, Griffith is delicate but deliberate. She started writing in grade school, she says, "mainly out of self-defense, 'cause I was so lousy at guitar." She admires the work of such fiction writers as Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers, and in tunes like Love Wore a Halo (on her strong- selling MCA album Little Love Affairs), Griffith can be heard trying to chase that same magnolia...
...Intent on his pursuits, impervious to the demonic, he will not notice the gods' dreadful pother being made above his head. The play deals with a recurrent flaw in the Greek ideal. Martha Nussbaum, in her profound study of ancient Greek ethical standards, The Fragility of Goodness, argues that self-sufficiency was a standard for the city that individuals tried to appropriate for themselves, with tragic results. Even Plato came to realize that he had sealed his Socrates off from human feeling by making him so independent of others. Later, he tried to rescue his Socrates from the fault...
Then, in 1951, the year Michael graduated from high school, his brother, already in college, suffered some fatal wound to that self-confidence the Dukakis-Boukis marriage was meant to instill. Stelian attempted suicide, and was committed to mental care. He lived on, erratically, for 22 more years, haunting the outskirts of his brother's career, organizing with him in the heady days of the C.O.D., winning his own term on the town-meeting committee, then changing party, competing for the votes of his parents (who had to change their registration to Republican when Stelian was on that ticket), trying...