Word: taut
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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From Berlin to Bari, from Malaga to Manchester, the news of the Russian bomb (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) struck with vastly varying impact. In some places, it cut deep along taut nerves; in others, it slid smoothly off the backs of nations long numbed by constant danger. Nowhere did it provoke the apocalyptic shudders which had attended the world's first atomic explosions; in the Atomic Year V, men still dreaded the unchained atom, but they had gotten used to the idea that they must live with it. The question was, how? How would the Other Bomb affect the great...
Meet the People. That is the whole story of A Rage to Live, John Henry O'Hara's new novel, his first in eleven years. But it is not O'Hara's whole intent. Like his earlier taut and febrile novels (Appointment in Samarra, Butterfield 8), A Rage to Live is shot through with enough gratuitous sex to get itself talked about. But unlike them it attempts the kind of large-scale social portraiture which could easily be the framework of the Great American Novel. Rage is not that. Its wide-lensed look at U.S. small...
...balance. Granted, Sanders Theater is too large for harpsichord tones to compete satisfactorily with the violin. Nevertheless, while being true to the music by using the harpsichord rather than the piano which dominated the nineteenth century, they have not weakened the violin proportionately. Schneider uses a straight bow with taut hairs rather than the arched, loose-haired bow to which Bach was accustomed. Even with this slight exception, however, it is undoubtedly true that the two give the most precise demonstration to be found anywhere of the complete understanding which Bach had for the possibilities of the instruments...
Cutting the Pipe. Nearly 48 hours after Kathy's fall, the lateral tunnel reached the well pipe. But rescue was hours away. Drill after drill broke. Doggedly, the workmen tried a pneumatic saw. Over the loudspeaker, the screech of their drilling sawed like a file on taut nerves. Finally at 6 o'clock Sunday night they asked that the microphones be turned off. There was a paralyzed wait that dragged on to two hours...
...Champion when it comes to realistic boxing scenes (TIME, April 11), Set-Up packs its own sharp, unexpected punches. The story, based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March, is fresh and honest. Its script, tense as a taut rope, neatly sidesteps the tintyped heroics of standard fight films and concentrates on the rotten underside of the ring and the characters that infest it. Especially pungent is the treatment of Paradise City, a typical overnight stop on the hayseed circuit. Rooting about in this neon-lighted netherworld-in down-at-heel bars, penny arcades, a ramshackle arena and its sweaty...