Word: skillfulness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Playing the humble part of the kuro-maku-the faceless stagehand of Japanese drama who bustles about, manipulating scenery behind a black curtain in a supposedly invisible state-Kishi, in recent years, has been a potent force in Japanese postwar politics, a skillful, hardworking, practical politician with a rare skill in threading his way between the excessive views of opposing factions at home and abroad. "We are opening windows to both sides, so to speak," Kishi has said of Japan's relations with East and West, " instead of keeping one side closed as before." A Japanese patriot...
...despite the skill, it is hard to see why anybody should care an iota what happens to Fuller's hero. Life may mean nothing, positive values may be ephemeral dreams, and happiness may be best symbolized by the orgasm, but these are attitudes which at this late date make unstimulating reading. Yet it is the very monotony, the lack of anything difficult or original, which couples with the skillful whodunit to make "A Far Place" an eminently successful diversion. After all, who wants to be stimulated after eight hours in the stacks...
...author also has a remarkable insight into the academic mind. He delineates the mentality and atmosphere of the collegiate with sometimes startling skill...
Always a candid confesser when he was caught, Ferdinand never reasonably explained why he could not be satisfied with his own identity; yet he always played his roles with urbane authority and considerable skill. Thus, while most of his neighbors in North Haven thought that "Godgart" was a little strange, they thoroughly liked him. It was his closest North Haven friend, Schoolteacher William Hopkins, who became suspicious enough of Ferdinand-especially after he gave Hopkins and his wife a captionless LIFE photo of himself-to supply Maine police with a set of Ferdinand's fingerprints taken from a beer...
...London's bombed and gutted streets in World War II, a perilous and lonely skill was developed to a specialist's high art-the defusing of ticking, active bombs which might go off at any moment if not delicately handled. Such an art was needed in the Middle East last week. There the specialists had first to rope off the area (which is the intent of the Eisenhower Doctrine), and then to take apart the mechanism of destruction...