Word: shams
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...hindsight, Updike's unswerving dedication to realistic fiction looks both daring and inspired. At the beginning of his career, the prevailing wisdom held that Joyce, Proust and Kafka had made the old-fashioned novel redundant, a tired illusion that had been exposed once and for all as a sham. Literature should no longer pretend to portray people doing things: it ought to be an artful arrangement of words on a page. Critic Richard Oilman, typically, called narrative "that element of fiction which coerces and degrades it into being a mere alternative to life." Updike's novels and stories...
Democratic leaders crossed up the strategy by scheduling a Friday vote on both a Republican version of the amendment and a hastily drawn Democratic substitute. Reagan assailed this substitute as a "sham," and so it was. Its purpose was to enable some Democrats to claim that they had indeed voted for a balanced budget. Said New York Democrat Thom as Downey: "It's all a charade...
...some Congressmen remained skeptical. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut blasted the certification report as "a sham," arguing that it would give a "green light" to Salvadorans to "do anything they damn well please." Democratic Representatives Tom Harkin of Iowa and Gerry Studds of Massachusetts announced plans to introduce a resolution in the House that would declare the Administration's report "null and void...
...dreamers' choice in the Derby was Cassaleria, a one-eyed colt with claustrophobia, the solitary member of the "20/20 Stable" (slogan: "Thine eye has seen the glory"). Cassaleria is another star-crossed son of Pretense, the father of poor Sham, who would have won any other Kentucky Derby and most other Preaknesses but finished second to Secretariat on both occasions in 1973. One of Cassaleria's first bobbling steps after birth tumbled him into a fence post and poked out his left eye, leaving a sorry-looking fleshed-over socket...
...Christians on Ikitsuki and neighboring islands, who were among the first to suffer, early on developed a way to preserve elements of their faith. Adopting a complex sham, they worshiped publicly at Buddhist temples, then slipped away at night to hold secret Christian prayer meetings. At home, they prayed overtly before Buddhist and Shinto altars, but their real altar became the nan do garni (closet god), innocuous-looking bundles of cloth in which revered Christian statues and medallions were hidden. For 2½ centuries, their fierce faith endured, but it inevitably also turned inward. Because their prayers and rituals...