Word: surfeits
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...deterministic, her characters pawns in the service of their creator's designs. Essayist Stanley Crouch says Morrison is "immensely talented. I just think she needs a new subject matter, the world she lives in, not this world of endless black victims." But for every pan, Morrison has received a surfeit of paeans: for her lyricism, for her ability to turn the mundane into the magical. In the Nobel sweepstakes at the moment, Morrison looks to be a lot closer to William Faulkner, whom many critics regard as this century's greatest American novelist, than to Buck and Steinbeck...
...fact that sex is pleasurable," observes Charles Schuster of Wayne State University in Detroit, "we would not engage in it." Unfortunately, some of the activities humans are neurochemically tuned to find agreeable--eating foods rich in fat and sugar, for instance--have backfired in modern society. Just as a surfeit of food and a dearth of exercise have conspired to turn heart disease and diabetes into major health problems, so the easy availability of addictive chemicals has played a devious trick. Addicts do not crave heroin or cocaine or alcohol or nicotine per se but want the rush of dopamine...
...Titanic, it turns out, is no disaster, just an uninspired shipboard melodrama with watery songs, predictable musings about the hubris of the enterprise, and a surfeit of cliched characters. They include the ship's craven owner, who keeps urging the captain to increase the speed; aristocrats like the John Jacob Astors and the Isidor Strauses, who drown with dignity; and some tiresomely idealistic Irish immigrants in steerage. What director Richard Jones and scenic designer Stewart Laing have accomplished, however, is an imaginative, even haunting, stage rendering of the sinking: the stage tilts ominously; faces of the doomed passengers appear...
Besides, if his Koln Concert is any evidence, Jarrett finds meaning and authenticity only in a surfeit of emotion and moodiness. The album, a recording of one of his improvisational concerts, is a real soul-twister, one part tear-jerker, one part elevator fodder, and one part art. Jarrett oozes presence on the album, as he grunts along with the music over and over and over again...
Sharon Stone is the latest entrant in the Streepstakes; she plays a death-row inmate in Bruce Beresford's Last Dance. In vain would we tell her that the world has a surfeit of good actresses but damn few movie stars and that she is one of the rare modern avatars of the grand old radiance. Acting is easy, glamour is hard. But Stone wants more than to make sin chic. To increase her stature, she must diminish her luster. And so she has chosen the sort of caged-woman melodrama--but with a message--that, when Susan Hayward tried...