Word: torpor
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...north of bustling Atlanta, it is an amiably sleepy town of about 2,000 souls (all of Forsyth County has only 38,000). Its biggest employer is a poultry-processing plant; its biggest social activity for adolescents is drag-racing outside the K mart. But for all its bucolic torpor, Cumming bears a dark stain on its history: an 18-year-old white woman was beaten and raped there one day in 1912 and, before she died, named three blacks as her attackers. One was lynched, the other two tried and hanged before a gloating crowd. There were so many...
Earlier that night, this Father Abraham of the apocalypse had vowed to surrender his beloved son if God would only restore everything to its earlier state of blessed torpor. And come morning, all is restored, in spades. Mama is whining, Daughter is pouting, Doctor is leaving. The world may not be ending, but theirs is -- with a whimper. For Alexander, the only rational response is to go crazy. He carefully sets the house afire and (in a wondrous 6 1/2-min. shot) runs about the grounds, eluding his family until he is carted off in an ambulance, and the gutted house...
...friend, confiding a querulous eyebrow or subtle grimace, simultaneously inhabiting and commenting on her role. Nicholson has a tougher assignment. He is, here, only half a man, all surface and no substance, and finally he distances himself from Mark, his face going slack in a kind of moral torpor. But when he smiles at Rachel like a cat with Tweety Pie feathers on his lips or croons nonsense to his firstborn, Nicholson reveals the charm that hides the folly. You can hate Mark for his cruelty or love him for his robust grace and fine, sharp humor. Same with this...
Burkina Faso's Sankara has also inherited a country in economic torpor, and one that because of a chronic drought has actually become poorer since he took over in a coup in August 1983. Sankara has cut civil servants' wages and raised taxes. One problem is that his regime's inflammatory rhetoric keeps bubbling to the surface, making some countries hesitant to offer economic aid. Last month, for example, a government-run newspaper compared President Reagan to Hitler, prompting the U.S. to cut back its commitment to two development projects in forestry and agriculture. France, which in 1984 contributed...
Other U.S. officials pointed out that President Reagan, in the heat of his own reelection battle, would not welcome any new Middle East peace initiatives before November. Until then, said a State Department aide, "torpor is best...