Word: spasms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This would merely be the latest spasm of cannibal chic-the recycling of pop-culture artifacts that produces Top 40 homages to the Three Stooges and drag queens in Marilyn Monroe sequins-if it were not for a more significant revival. Five Hitchcock films are back where they belong, in the movie theaters, after 20 years in distribution limbo. Constituting the best and the least of Hitchcock's work during his most productive decade (1948-58), the "forbidden five" are once again demonstrating their director's box-office magnetism. Rear Window (1954), the first of the quintet...
...delegate slung a live cat around his neck. Two Bundestag Deputies played soccer in the aisles. From the podium, a man in a clown suit complained that the conference was interfering with Carnival, West Germany's annual spasm of pre-Lenten revelry. A delegate suggested that male candidates for the European Parliament in Strasbourg, whose nomination was the purpose of the meeting, should "undress and present themselves in the nude because the human body reveals political attitudes." Keynote Speaker Antje Vollmer railed against the "industrialized nature-destroying internationalism of neocolonialist nation states." Finally, the proceedings were disrupted...
Ordinarily, the spasm of savagery simply passes and recedes in time, an ugly, vivid memory. But last week, in an extraordinary moment of grace, the violence in St. Peter's Square was transformed. In a bare, white-walled cell in Rome's Rebibbia prison, John Paul tenderly held the hand that had held the gun that was meant to kill him (see cover). For 21 minutes, the Pope sat with his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ah Agca. The two talked softly. Once or twice, Agca laughed. The Pope forgave him for the shooting...
...situation was distressingly familiar. The 98th Congress had dithered for months over its most basic responsibility: funding the vast operations of the Federal Government. Now it was in a frantic haste to adjourn. In a sudden spasm of activity, it fell all too short of meeting its self-imposed spending and revenue limits. Illinois Democrat Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, pronounced a scathing verdict on the legislators' performance. "As we leave Washington," he predicted, "word of our impotence will precede us. We have put special interests on notice that we can be pushed around...
...really set your mind to it, you will at least be able to focus in on the novel's "meaning." But this rule of thumb does not apply to Gilbert Sorrentini's latest work, Blue Pastoral--thinking is of no use. And only in the grip of a spasm of frustration, as you are preparing to heave this book across the room, will you possibly get an inkling of what has been going on or why the actions took place...