Word: sharked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last was a leopard shark, billeted in close quarters, looking bilious and rapacious. I watched him swim urgently into the wall, forced to close a circle despite his desire to strike out on a straight line; the passion for linearity, the fatality of circularity, the bleak, self-depleting alternation of ferocity and grim quiescence; above all, the constriction, the small diameter of the circle, with the glass portion of the circumference flashing ever changing, ever irrelevant glimpses of the other spectator strolling among the circles, always falling imperceptibly to his right; these thoughts passed through my mind. The circle...
Barthelme is a genius at self-consciousness. He uses cliches to make the reader think; he uses parodies to stir emotion. Like a billiard shark trying carom shots, he plays worn emotional impacts and responses against one another. The meaning behind the meaning in his stories is that the old main lines of communication are down. The simple, the forthright, the straightforward can no longer be confidently said. For the time being at least, messages must be sent by mirrors. And at that game, Donald Barthelme knows no peer...
...Marcos has begun to realize, student violence is only the visible shark fin of a dangerous, antigovernment mood. It feeds partly on old resentments, real and imagined, against American business domination of the Philippines, and partly on some specific grievances against the President. Filipinos are increasingly cynical about Marcos' 2,000,000-vote margin of victory in last November's presidential campaign-a feat that they quite reasonably believe could only have been achieved by widespread vote buying. They fear, moreover, that his pre-election spending on roads and school buildings has brought the nation to the brink...