Word: subject
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Second, intense political discussions never really seem to arise. Bars are too noisy, and the subject matter is too boring. Besides, many of us are very entranced by the fact that we have been sworn to secrecy about the particulars of our jobs--why, indeed, would I write a column on social concerns when if I could tell you about the secret files I have access to in my unnamed workplace?--that we tend to shy away from any discussion even alluding to the government...
...subject of the American national identity is complex and contentious, often the subject of longwinded debates in American history circles. Some pundits say the United States suffers from a cultural divide. Americans don't have a common culture, they say; the American people comprise too many different cultures and possess too little national sentiment to sustain a single perspective (or even a single song). Certainly, something of what I've seen among my fellow Americans in Spain supports this argument. We come from very different communities; we represent different regions and ethnicities and viewpoints. My own perspective as an Asian...
...proposition with which young Jennifer Belle cannot argue. The 28-year-old Manhattanite has received a great deal of publicity for her comic first novel, Going Down (Riverhead Books; $12; 254 pages), primarily because of its subject: a year in the life of a young woman who becomes a prostitute to pay her tuition at New York University. Right away we know we are in for humor of the zanily incongruous sort because Belle has given her heroine a some-of-my-best-friends-went-to-Exeter name: Bennington Bloom...
Jennifer Belle is an exceptionally funny writer, but it's hard to get past the fact that she never gives us a believable reason for Bennington's particular work-study program. Belle herself supported her writing habit by working in real estate. That will be the subject of her next, and surely more realistic, novel...
...through about 10 percent of them. That's how it always is: so many books and never enough time to read them all. At least in school, one can pretend that there are a finite number of required books one must read to be educated in a certain subject. In real life, there are infinitely many, as many as the possible variations on a Bach fugue. In a way, it's comforting that the store of knowledge is never exhaustible. On the other hand, it feels like a losing battle. But in mid-July, the summer still at its peak...