Word: strine
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...novel, The Fermata (Random House; 303 pages; $21), is somewhat less elevated. A fermata, in music, is the extension of a note, chord or rest. What is extended, or stopped, in Baker's tale is the forward motion of the universe. His hero, a fellow named Arno Strine, has discovered that he can freeze time (presumably from sea to shining sea) by snapping his fingers, while all else is stopped. What he does is a 13-year-old boy's dream: Strine, who's 35, takes the clothes off unresisting women and masturbates. Then he re- dresses the women, snaps...
That's about it. Not another idea or phenomenon disturbs the flow -- that's probably the right word -- of the narration. As with any extended porn, the book is a highly elaborate tease, sillier and more exotic with each chapter. It's not ugly stuff, as such things go; Strine isn't a rapist or even a thief, though he does steal peeks. Ogling is really all he's interested in, and all that Baker seems to feel readers need to sustain their interest. That's fairly patronizing and more than a little feebleminded, though maybe he is right. Still...
Something like four guys tied for fourth. Chris Sullivan and Rob Gustafson of Harvard, Scott Strine of Army and Forlidas of Princeton had all successfully jumped 1.98 meters and missed at 2.05 meters...
...They didn't use Australian actors-not many lurking in L.A., I suppose, and you can't have Peter Allen chewing the ram-stag mutton and pretending to be a jackaroo. So they all talk either Ma Maison Irish or Rodeo Drive pommy. Not a trace of Strine from magpie to mopoke until Bryan Brown (who plays Luke, the shearer Meggie marries when she can't get her priest) looms up on the horizon, picking the damper crumbs from his Great Whites with a stringybark sapling. But he's the only dinkum specimen...
There was no election scheduled or in sight, but Australia last week was ablaze with impassioned political rallies, complete with flesh pressing, placard waving and, of course, blunt "Strine" rhetoric. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was under attack by Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser, ostensibly for his government's involvement in a political scandal. "Either he knew everything that was going on, in which case he's a liar, or, alternatively, he's a fool," said Fraser. For his part, Whitlam castigated the opposition as "reactionary, conservative fascists [who] have stopped at nothing to destroy democracy...