Word: smarting
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...classic story. The demure small-town librarian swept off her feet by the handsome prince - a story with its roots in Cinderella ... and also, in this case, in the rather unbelievable recent history of our country. The librarian is smart and attractive but almost catatonic with guilt: her carelessness behind the wheel once caused the death of a good friend. The prince is charming, as advertised, but also carefree in a way that the librarian envies and mistrusts. He adores her, without question. She succumbs, with reservations. In Curtis Sittenfeld's brilliant novel American Wife, their names are Alice Lindgren...
...last point I completely agree with. Since 9/11, I have regularly gotten calls from very smart, talented people who intend to join the CIA. Competing against their résumés, I would never make the cut today. So I'll split the difference and help the CIA figure out how to keep a new generation from running for the door like...
...close to an answer as you'll get here is that Burn After Reading is an essay in the cocoon of ignorance most of us live in. It pushes the old form of movie comedy - smart people saying clever things - into collision with today's dominant model of slackers whose utterly unfounded egotism eventually worms its way into an audience's indulgence. Which is to say that most of the people here seem like bright lights but are actually dim bulbs. They're not falling-down stupid; they radiate the subtler variety of idiocy that can be mistaken for charm...
...That's certainly true of the CIA analyst played by John Malkovich. Osborne Cox: his very name is steeped in two denominations of old money. After decades at the Agency, he has perfected the look and the attitude of a career spook. He wears a smart dark suit and that inevitable flourish of the house eccentric, a bow tie. Osborne's Olympian contempt for his superiors, his overcareful pronunciation of French words ("mem-wah"), the modest shock value of a Princeton man spicing every sentence with the f-word - all these mark him as hailing from that generation and class...
...under a 25-year agreement that only Hershey can terminate. The idea at the time was that Hershey had the distribution power Cadbury was lacking to compete with Mars and Nestlé. But losing control of your own brand's destiny in a major market doesn't look smart today...