Word: strung
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...warm up to a character at once high strung and low key? It takes patience, a virtue that Mark Salzman demonstrated in Iron and Silk, a 1986 account of the author's experiences in China. Now Salzman brings East and West together in The Soloist (Random House; 184 pages; $19), a novel that counterpoints Occidental self-consciousness against Oriental ego transcendence. The dissonance is played out at a murder trial where Reinhart is a juror. There is no doubt that the young man in the dock has killed his Zen instructor. He says he beat him to death after hearing...
...didn't even have the bus fare to Guildford even if we had known where it was," Gerry recalls. By the time the case is brought to court, the "Guildford Four" have been joined by various members of Gerry's family. His little cousin, his old aunt, and his strung-out friends look ridiculous as they are accused of "one of the most cunning and cruel conspiracies ever to set foot on English soil...
...Rupert Murdoch blithely concedes, "will certainly be a loss." But these days in the televi -- that is, information superhighway -- business, the iffy expenditure of billion-dollar sums is required in order to be considered visionary. "It's a plan for the future," says Lucie Salhany, Murdoch's charmingly high-strung network president, of the football deal. "It takes the network to another level." In other words, it's a 21st century thing, and if you don't get it, you're a plodder and a bean counter...
Unfortunately, after 50 or 60 pages of this, the realization dawns that anecdotes and strung-together incidents are all the novel offers in the way of plot. Doyle's impersonation of young Paddy may be too accurate, prompting readers to recall that history is not replete with examples of successful 10- year-old novelists. Joyce's Portrait takes its hero through adolescence; Paddy's self-portrait remains stuck somewhere past the moocow stage...
Colwin probably intends these paragons of unoriginal thinking as types, to highlight Jane Louise's `normal' abnormality. We all worry because we don't lead lives of endless Kodak moments strung together, but no one really does, Colwin reassures. This cunning ruse fails, in part because Jane Louise just isn't that normally abnormal, but mainly because it makes for dull reading...