Word: squalore
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Espionage is the nominal subject, but there are few spine-tingling pleasures in James O. Jackson's grimly fascinating novel Dzerzhinsky Square. His goal is to depict, in the ruined life of one man, the privation, squalor, illogic and naked fear of everyday existence for Soviet citizens. Jackson, TIME's Moscow bureau chief, hangs his narrative on the premise that Soviet soldiers who had fallen into Nazi hands thereby became "tainted" in the eyes of their government and, after the war, faced exile to Siberia or worse. He further suggests that U.S. authorities offered them new identities, enabling the soldiers...
...protests added momentum to a rebellion among young Haitians who saw little chance for improvement in their lives under Duvalier. The opposition movement was supported by the Roman Catholic Church, which since the 1983 visit of Pope John Paul II had protested Duvalier's indifference to the country's squalor. Last month a new wave of protests swept the country. Although Duvalier's troops and police maintained control of Port- au-Prince, much of the rest of the country was in open revolt...
...precious cargo: the manuscript of his second novel, Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden, which was published in English last year (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $16.95). It is not an angry indictment of Cuba today but something more powerful: a sad but engrossing tale of the spiritual squalor that has settled over the island. Padilla's memoirs, Self-Portrait of Other -- the other being the man he left behind in Havana -- is scheduled to be published next year...
...leave his shabby room only to use one of the hallway bathrooms, which are shared by as many as a dozen tenants. Deputy City Attorney Stephanie Sautner, who prosecuted the case, told the Los Angeles Times, "If landlords fear that they would have to live in the same squalor they impose on some of their tenants, they just might think twice before allowing their apartments to deteriorate to such a level...
...madness of promiscuity, Hoffman laughs at the self-delusion and hypocrisy of it. His play, told in montage style, juxtaposes reveries by the ingratiating central couple--for example, about the pleasures of "nondirective, noncommitted, nonauthoritarian" sex--with satiric snippets depicting how that rhetoric translates into the raunch and squalor of an anonymous sexual underworld. The supporting cast all play multiple roles; Ken Kliban and Lily Knight are especially effective as an AIDS victim's estranged straight brother and tolerant chum. Hoffman has written rich, lyric dialogue for the leads: a budding writer (Jonathan Hogan) who is diagnosed as having...