Word: shocks
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...initial shock, the death of basketball star Reggie Lewis last week seemed a grim parable of the seductive power of professional sports -- of an athlete so devoted to a game and its rewards that he would distort medical truth in order to keep playing. It also seemed an object lesson in the relativity of medical truth, and in the perplexities -- perhaps even the questionable ethics -- of equally eminent specialists making highly public, completely contradictory diagnoses. The details that emerged in the days after Lewis died, however, suggested a medical and emotional situation that was both more complicated and more subtle...
Such calculated shock tactics seem qualitatively different from the methods of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Treasure Island or even the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Classical children's literature is full of overt and implicit terrors because some gifted authors could remember and portray a child's view, those feelings of awe, uncertainty and fear inspired by the world outside. Fright requires no invention; conquering it through language does...
Ironically, the price war may have strengthened U.S. computer leadership in some key markets. American firms, which feared a takeover by Japanese firms during the 1980s, have exported their cutthroat pricing to Tokyo with stunning success. Led by IBM, Dell and Compaq, U.S. companies sent shock waves through the Japanese PC establishment by trimming prices up to 30%. While Japanese domestic manufacturers, such as Fujitsu and NEC, have responded with deep discounts of their own, they have been unable to shake off the Americans, much to the delight of Japanese consumers...
...Love is the only shocking fact left on the fact of the earth," Sandra Bernhard declares near the beginning of her second book, Love, Love, and Love. Bernhard seems just the woman to prove it: she's flirted with Madonna on national TV, performed strip teases with the American flag and made David Letterman blush. Surely few other American entertainers know as much about the shock value of unusual pleasures. Unfortunately, her new book, composed largely of unrelated vignettes, suggests that she is an entertainer who works better on the screen than the page...
Also, Kaufmann spoils valuable shock potential by casting edgy-psycho specialist Ray Wise as an important senator. There's no question the senator is up to something after Wise's first goofy leer. Some unexpectedly intense eroticism seems thrown in to earn the film its thriller merit badge, but excellent, brooding camera work goes a lot further to keep our interest. The Crichton hit factory churns...