Word: sparking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ONLY PROBLEM by Muriel Spark; Putnam; 179 pages...
...Muriel Spark's 17th novel is informed with that perception. Her central character is a pained, Job-like figure regarded in a comic light, as if, between losses, he is playing God's fool. It is a difficult role. Harvey Gotham is a wealthy scholar-dilettante who retires to rural France in his mid-30s. There he occupies himself with a monograph on the riddle of universal suffering: If the Lord is beneficent, why does his earth contain so much misery? On the bestseller list that conundrum is called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Here...
...Spark once wrote, half whimsically, that in the Book of Job "there are points of characterization and philosophy on which I think I could improve." Her alterations chiefly consist of attempts at clever explication. Job's suffering "became a habit," theorizes Harvey. "He not only argued the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable." As for the comforters, at least they "kept him company. And they took turns as analyst. Job was like the patient on the couch." But, Harvey concludes, the Book of Job teaches us "the futility of friendship in times...
Israel's persistent economic woes became more severe after the 1973 war, when the country was forced to replace as much as $20 billion in military equipment. After taking office in 1977, Begin attempted to spark the economy by allowing each Israeli the right to hold up to $3,000 in foreign currency. The nation embarked on a spending splurge, causing inflation to spiral. In 1979, the rate broke...
...Coward made mock of many social dogmas, but he was a true believer in the imperium of style. Those who had the divine spark got to ride through life on a silk cushion, inventing their own rules and then ignoring them, cutting the boorish infidels down with gay, rapier wit. Thus it is with the merrily amoral ménage in Design for Living, a triangle with some complex emotional geometry. Otto (Frank Langella) and Leo (Raul Julia) are friends; Gilda (Jill Clayburgh) and Otto become lovers; Gilda dumps Otto for Leo; Gilda leaves them both for a stuffy...