Word: torch
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...TORCH is at Lake Placid. They carried it all the way from Olympia for the first time in the history of American Olympic Games, and nobody would have known the difference if they had lit it with a bic. But the authenticity of the Olympic tradition--and the universal respect that this tradition elicits, has suddenly been threatened by the United States. The Olympics are an endangered species--a venerated institution that represents more than athletic competition...
Taam's is a Godfather story with some new wrinkles: he was born in San Francisco where, during the 1960s, he owned a Marxist bookstore. The conservative Triad sends an arsonist who destroys the shop and also incinerates Taam's wife. Taam then kills the Triad torch and flees to Red China, where he becomes a respected party member. After seven years, his return to the U.S. is negotiated as part of a deal to sell a Reno casino to the Triad. They are not to be trusted...
...threat of boycott revived an old suggestion: that the Games be permanently located in a small country, thus making them less vulnerable to the pressures of high-powered international politics. President Carter favors this step. He believes that the most logical site would be Greece, where the Olympic torch first flickered...
...ensuing judgment, not surprisingly, is unfavorable. During the winter of 1973-74, with the English unions and the Conservative government locked in strikes and threats, Strickland becomes active in Labor Party politics, on the side all his well-to-do friends detest. He thinks he is rekindling the socialist torch he carried when young, but his wife Clare scalds him: "You're addicted to your own self-importance and like a real junkie you need bigger and bigger doses to keep going." Strickland also becomes embroiled in an affair with an enormously rich young woman and realizes, belatedly, that...
...genius of Brel's music carries the show. With deftness and economy this balladeer of the down-and-out mixed the tender and the funereal into a weltschmertz as heady as any German musician has ever brewed. These are songs that use familiar sounds--the sagging languor of a torch-song, the steady intensity of an army march--to put the listener off-guard and then knock him flat with cynical or black-humorous lyrics. "Marathon" goes on a careless, accelerating dance through the 20th century, nostalgically stopping at favorite decades, until the abrupt, eschatological ending puts a stop...