Word: stoicism
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...strong, instinctive stoicism draws a woman called Disa back to her Icelandic homeland to die. "Hope is the sister of self-deception," she says, knowing she has only one year to live. Yet this is not a morose novel but one lifted by love, friendship and cooking, an art Disa has spent much of her life perfecting at an English country inn. Hers is a hard, unflinching life, and one skillfully revealed in a steady stream of memories that accompanies Disa on a last migration back to her Arctic nest...
Advancing age and the AIDS-related deaths of friends--"my everpresent dead"--figure prominently in these poems, but so does Gunn's humorous touch. In "Blues for the New Year, 1997," he notes, with tongue-in-cheek stoicism, "I'm sixty-seven/and have high blood pressure,/and probably shouldn't/be doing speed at all." When a male acquaintance appears at his door, disheveled and asking for a night's rest, the inquiring poet notes: "You don't feel anecdotal,/Give me a weary grin, And eat three plates of Total." Seeing a renowned bar brawler in his decline, Gunn...
...advent tolls the loss of infinite opportunities for heroic deeds. "Don't kill the messenger," goes the saying, but today such advice is unnecessary because, for the most part, there are no messengers. If the Greeks had e-mail, Boston would not have its marathon. Likewise, the strong-souled stoicism of our present day couriers, who "come rain or snow or sleet or hail," is becoming obsolete, only to be replaced with a decidedly unheroic form of communication. The midnight e-mail of Paul Revere is not the stuff of epic poetry...
...Carter's prison life does not offer many opportunities for electrifying moviemaking, but The Hurricane is nevertheless a thoughtful and even inspiring film. That's not just because of the way it celebrates Carter's self-discipline, but because the director, Norman Jewison, enforces the contrast between his stoicism and the efforts of the unlikely team of '60s activists that eventually came to his rescue...
...several character flaws to which Bond seemed vulnerable in past films have now surfaced, much to his disadvantage. For instance, his stoicism cedes to jealous rage when he learns that his enemy, Renard (Robbie Coltrane), had previously taken advantage of Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), Bond's latest interest. Bond's was right anger, but revealed an unprecedented dependence and emotion all the same...