Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time is not always a dependable ally. Like young Maciek in Wartime Lies, Ben can never come to terms with his tragic past. It drains his personal attachments and achievements of their joy and meaning. Excerpts from his correspondence and unmailed jottings fill up with foreboding and descriptions of himself as "barren, dark and desperate...
...1950S THE YOUNG RICHARD Rodriguez left Mexico with his parents to settle in California. Now the Mexican border runs through his brain. On one side is an old country more imagined than recalled, an ur-land of fatedness and tragic history. On the other is a bright, forgetful America, where every sunset takes the day with it. For years Rodriguez has been negotiating the divide in a mood of deep melancholy. In 1981 he published Hunger of Memory, an account of his longings en route through the parochial schools of Sacramento and the university campuses of Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley...
...greatest charm of noise is when it ceases. In silence, suddenly, it seems as if all the windows of the world are thrown open and everything is as clear as on a morning after rain. Silence, ideally, hums. It charges the air. In Tibet, where the silence has a tragic cause, it is still quickened by the fluttering of prayer flags, the tolling of temple bells, the roar of wind across the plains, the memory of chant...
...AZIZ RANTISI, THE SPOKESMAN FOR 415 Palestinians expelled by Israel three weeks ago, looked out over the wintry landscape of the deportees' tent camp in southern Lebanon. "This is the first time most of us have seen snow," he said. "It would be beautiful if this weren't so tragic...
...disease (adrenoleukodystrophy). Their search leads them into shrill conflict with an overcautious medical establishment. It also draws them into that least cinematic of environments, the library. When they are not poring over volumes, they are earnestly discussing their various findings. Both modes distance the audience from them and their tragic offspring. Eventually the couple manage to find a palliative for the disease, but Miller never finds one for our boredom...