Word: tormenting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...still a majority of them. The new surge of people fleeing is sometimes seen as the beginning of the end for Fidel, but it might equally provide him with a safety valve that drains away the most seriously discontented -- as well as illustrating once again his unrivaled ability to torment American Presidents...
Though it is not explicitly acknowledged, this torment seems to have been the inspiration for A Map of the World (Doubleday; 390 pages; $22), a mischievous and unsettling marital melodrama by Jane Hamilton, whose first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. Hamilton introduces us to Alice and Howard Goodwin, a handsome Wisconsin couple -- she a school nurse, he a dairy farmer -- who are the parents of two little girls and who could be exhibited at the state fair in the perfect-marriage pavilion...
...only dreams that give Kien escape involve his free-spirited childhood sweetheart, who refuses to embrace government propaganda about the fighting. But his memories of their prewar days together also edge toward torment. Before he leaves for the front, she entices him to miss the train and then insists on traveling with him as he tries to catch up with his battalion. On the way, Kien is forced to watch her raped by another soldier...
Even this term, Blackmun, 85, was still making news on the Court. Citing years of torment over the issue, Blackmun announced that he opposed the death, penalty, calling it cruel and unusual punishment...
...descendants of the Greta Garbo school of celebrity reticence. Nowadays the aggressively reclusive are outnumbered by the aggressively revealing -- legions of withering semistars who feel compelled to serve up their private torment for public consumption. Books and movies happily package the failed relationship, the traumatic childhood, the life of chemically enhanced misery. Catharsis boosts careers...