Word: slights
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite Arlen's grand theme, his book feels slight. He has turned to book-length fiction comparatively late in life; evidently it is not his natural form. Even so, Arlen has sound instincts about human nature: Tom is wholly believable in his fumbling attempts to launch a just-us-guys friendship with his father's latest collaborator; Sam's mistress Maria performs a convincing balancing act between servility and possession. Arlen's prose, if too painstakingly crafted, is at once taut and richly evocative. And in its glimpses of combat between father...
...mind, Enveloped in official lies, swathed in ... ironic smile, smothered in warm and generous friendliness that can burn cold at an order from above, you exist in the knowledge that at any moment of the state's choosing it can manipulate your surrounding environment gradually or dramatically to cause slight discomfort or excruciating pain. So you begin to take a defensive posture. You feel guilt over ordinary acts of courtesy goodwill toward Russians who want book they cannot get, for instance, and who ask for your help. If you hesitate in the simple giving a Russian friend a book, because...
...Wesleyan shirt aspires to snobbiness. It says, "I am discerning enough to know the difference between these schools with very slight name differences, and you are not. Not to mention that you probably thought I said, 'Wellesley...
Scalise, whose squad some consider a slight underdog to the two-time defending Ivy champs, is a little more confident. "We have a tradition of rising to the occasion when we're underdogs," he says...
...gulf last week, Iraqi planes continued to threaten shipping. One missile caused only slight damage to a Liberian-registered supertanker, the St. Tobias. But another of the weapons was believed to have been responsible for destroying a small, German-operated supply ship off Iran's Kharg Island. The explosion killed the ship's eleven-member crew, including three British divers. Britain promptly issued a "strong protest" to Iraq...