Word: sword
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...course, this is a double-edged sword--the "Bloom County" crew of politically-aware funny animals is currently running on air. After four years, has Watterson's device--a boy's ability to alter his cartoon reality quickly--also gone cold...
...while Phelps says small businesses can still survive along Mass. Ave., the new developments--such as the one which edged Hubba Hubba out of its seven-year location--are a "double-edged sword" for most small businesses...
...narrator, who describes himself as a retired terrorist (he fought to establish Israel), refers to a belief among Welsh nationalists that an old steel sword briefly on view in England was actually King Arthur's. The narrator points out that Arthur may not have existed, and that whatever sword he owned would surely have rusted to nothing. He admits, however, that the sword in question was engraved with the letter A. And he retails the scholarly notion that long before it belonged to the proprietor of Camelot it was the legendary Sword of Mars, said to make its wielder invincible...
...sword does turn up, after some unlikelihoods normal to popular adventure. Perhaps it was Arthur's, but Burgess, who invented it, now seems to feel that it doesn't much matter. Both he and his characters discount Welsh nationalism as unserious playacting. One of his protagonists, in exasperation, chucks the sword into a pond, where it sinks without a deathbed speech. He explains, "I had to grasp a chunk of the romantic past and find it rusty." Which does not entirely answer a last-page question to the author: "What was that all about...
...teenager (Uma Thurman) and the beautiful, pious Mme. de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), who keeps resisting Valmont's purring declarations of love. And then, to his astonishment, he realizes that he means them. In a rake, sincerity is lethal. He who has lived by the word will die by the sword. And Mme. la Marquise will founder with him. Their game is over...