Word: subjection
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pretend that you know nothing about the Boston Marathon. Let's pretend that you go to Harvard, and as a Harvard student, you are expected to pontificate on any given subject at a moment's notice. Let's pretend that you, luckily, picked up a copy of The Crimson this morning...
John Sayles rightfully received props for his flowing, inter-generational mural of time, Lone Star. With the awkwardly titled Men With Guns (it amazingly both sounds like, and is, a bad translation), however, Sayles has turned a fundamentally disturbing subject matter fit for a sober documentary into the slow-motion romp of a Mr. Magoo social historian. Main character Dr. Humberto Fuentes (Federico Luppi) undergoes an overblown process of discovery in which we are invited to partake: nasty secret things happening and happen after civil strife. Again, no one can fault Sayles for noble motives, and obviously the story itself...
...Party thrives. Reminiscent of latter-day sitcom standards, much of its humor is based on the sudden ironic entrance of various cast members. For example, in the midst of a weighty discussion between the "Unidentified Guest" and Edward Chamberlayne (Sam Shaw '99), the troubled husband whose marriage is the subject of the play, the hysterical, aunt-like Julia (Emily Stone '99) rushes in to retrieve her lost umbrella and maternally questions Edward about his seemingly drunken companion. We wish we could parrot her seeming naivete...
Fortunately, with Lidie, Smiley proves once again that she can jump through genres with the blink of a metaphorical eye and leaves the `repetitive subject matter' label with the likes of John Grisham and Danielle Steele. She takes the astoundingly courageous story of one pioneer woman, mixes it with a potentially-dry `olde-tyme' writing style and comes up with a tale that takes a few pages to get into, but that takes great effort...
...each chapter, from Lidie's beloved book A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home by Miss Catherine E. Beecher, adds a deliciously straight-faced irony to Lidie's own rather un-ladylike story. In addition, a mini-title that summarizes that page's subject in about five words or less is found at the top of every odd-numbered page, adding even more to the book's vividly antique feel...