Word: studiousness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Philip Roth once described himself as part Henny Youngman and part Henry James. His severest critics, however, treated him as if he were part Lenny Bruce, part Meyer Lansky. The studious, law-abiding author of Portnoy's Complaint was regarded by some to have distorted his heritage for a few laughs and committed a profitable act of cultural gangsterism. Judging from his published responses, Roth was surprised that he had caused such a fuss. One does not, after all, have to be Alfred North Whitehead to understand that the characters in Portnoy are amusing words on paper...
Though he can be an outgoing glad-hander of relaxed charm, who willingly puts in six days a week in the political boondocks of Israel listening to ward heelers and party pros, Peres is also a studious, scholarly man who reads voraciously in three languages and writes poetry for intellectual relaxation. His office in the Labor Party's headquarters building on the Tel Aviv waterfront is usually swarming with admirers, foreign visitors and party hacks. Inside, the room is piled high with books in Hebrew and English (prominently including Hedrick Smith's work, Reagan: The Man, The President...
...American Standard Bible (1971, 14 million sold, $13.95). This update of the King James rigidly follows the original Hebrew and Greek syntax (". . . Then entered in therefore the other disciple also"), and because of this became a surprise bestseller among studious conservatives. But as literature, it is strictly beaverboard, and so does not justify its title as a "standard Bible...
Jutta Skogberg, a 17-year-old Finn staying with a family in Wellesley, said that Harvard has "enormous prestige" in Finland. "I thought Harvard students would be very studious and not interested in much else, but they're really fun, outgoing, partying people," she added...
...McPhee has also tangled with long, discursive pieces about the higher levels of tennis, the craft of bark canoe builders, missing links in the technology of nuclear waste disposal. McPhee is an adventurer of information, a stickler for the facts. He has written a book about oranges, a most studious and exacting survey that would do justice to Montaigne in its recognition of fundamental cravings. Typically, McPhee works from the sidelines, bending his style to any angle or knot that might suit his subject: in one piece, the raging differences between conservationists and the Federal government are tightly defined when...