Word: stranger
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Even those who had never read Camus became familiar with the chain-smoking figure in a trench coat, fatefully evocative of Bogart and Yves Montand. Much was made of his celebrated statement that in a purposeless world the only vital question was one of suicide. His novels The Stranger and The Fall describe souls out of touch with a moral landscape; The Plague watches townspeople succumb to a literal and spiritual disease. It is small wonder that at his death Camus seemed the spokesman of despairing existentialism, a cinematic figure as doom-ridden as any of his characters...
...John Sparkman to cast the 60th vote if the 59th could be secured. Byrd had acquired a pledge of that vote from Louisiana Democrat Russell Long, who would switch from his pro-filibuster stand if, among other things, the bill were amended to outlaw labor's use of "stranger" pickets, workers from one plant who join picket lines at another. Byrd planned to send the bill back to the Human Resources Committee to add the Long provision...
...Arizona, Hahn learns how not to communicate with a cat. "Because the aggressive posture of the cat is the locked-eye gaze," she is told, "cats will transfer this reaction to humans, and when the stranger says 'Hi!' a cat will, according to its nature, back away or make a threatening gesture or merely ignore." At Ringling Brothers Circus, Animal Trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams soothes his tigers with a friendly "Wuzza, wuzza, wuzza." "I have this feeling," he says, "the animal knows how nice I am when he hears me; it's not the words...
Added to these oddities is dialogue that frequently sounds like a parody of existential maundering. Marianne talks to her father: "Does the time still hang as heavy on your hands as when you were young?" One of her friends approaches a stranger and remarks, "Why don't you join a political party?" By all rights, posturing or off-center exchanges such as these should make a mockery of the whole enterprise...
...powerhouse energy, there is an underlying melancholy in some of Seger's new music, which may be one reason he is writing more ballads these days. "Writing rock is too limiting," he says. "I have ten times as much freedom writing ballads." Stranger in Town contains some exemplary rockers, but it is the ballads that set off the lasting echoes. The Famous Final Scene at first appears to be about the end of a romance ("Think in terms of bridges burned/ Think of seasons that must end"), but could also be about the closing circle of a career...