Word: snappishness
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...behind the question "What should I read?" is usually a second, tacit one: "And why, while we're on the subject, should I read it?" Coming up with answers has long been the practice and business of literary criticism. But such queries have, in recent years, taken on a snappish edge, not only from attention-span-challenged students of the MTV generation but from a number of grownups whose putative profession is the teaching of literature...
...Miami. The old gentlemen here are Richard Harris as Frank, a sometime seafarer who once brawled with Papa, and Robert Duvall as Walt, a fastidious Cuban barber, now retired. Harris has fun overacting, Duvall has fun underacting, but nobody has any fun with the opposite sex. Frank has a snappish relationship with his landlady, played by Shirley MacLaine, and is too raffish for Piper Laurie, who is excellent as a dignified lady he meets at senior-citizen matinees. Meanwhile Walt moons over a young waitress (Sandra Bullock). Also written by a sprout, Steve Conrad, and directed by Randa Haines (Children...
...Latin America, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the New World is still two years away, but already it is marred by snappish and divisive quarrels over the meaning of the event. Native American zealots like Means see Columbus as a precursor of exploitation and conquest. Hispanic Americans want to use the quincentenary to stress the glories of Spanish culture in the New World. Environmentalists see the anniversary as a reminder that the arrival of Europeans meant the despoliation of the New World and as a potential inspiration to modern-day Americans to save what is left...
HARP by John Gregory Dunne (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). Novelist Dunne (True Confessions) fesses up that his own barbed style and snappish instincts have roots in an immigrant Irish heritage in which he learned that writing well is the best revenge...
...ambiguous dawn -- large cars and vans. The crusaders of Operation Rescue do not know where they are going, but they are prepared for long drives. Organizers line up the carloads to be given maps as they peel off out of the lot. Taut nerves make the leaders snappish as they scurry about, pausing in little clots of prayer, then bustling to their tasks. Their language is semimilitary, befitting such constant readers of the Book of Exodus. These are churchgoing, middle-class couples, uneasy in the shabby clothes they have put on for prison service later...