Word: unreal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Like O'Neill, I have no idea, it's so talky, every one of the characters sit there, with their head on the bar for 30 minutes...unreal, unreal, seems like no life, but there's something to be discovered...
This second narrative draws the reader in and personalizes Vladek's unreal life in the death camps. The suffering which Art Spiegelman sensed under the surface of his family life comes alive. When Francoise and Artie cannot sleep because Vladek screams in his sleep, the effects of the holocaust upon those who lived through it becomes all the more tangible. Spiegelman has said that he grew up thinking it was normal to live in a house where people woke up screaming every night...
...then get back to B again. Columbus' claim to be a discoverer is, admittedly, a function of European consciousness. It exists only in a European cultural frame -- the native cultures and civilizations of America knew very well where they were. But this does not make it unreal. The achievement of Columbus' first voyage in 1492 was to open a route to the New World that could be sailed again, by himself and others, over and over...
During the war in the gulf, the escapist magician made urgent reality inescapable. Television became spookier than usual in its metaphysical way: the instant global connection that is informative and hypnotic and jumpy all at once -- immediate and unreal. The sacramental anchormen dispensed their unctions and alarms. During the war, I found shelter in books in the middle of the night. They are cozier. The global electronic collective, the knife of the news, could wait until the sun came up. The mind prefers to be private in its sleepless stretches...
Like some martial equivalent of the Reagan years, the victory in the gulf makes Americans feel better about themselves. It was splendid and necessary but also unreal -- an action-adventure that, like most movies, was divided into three chapters, with decisive turning points: 1) the Iraqi invasion and the buildup of coalition forces; 2) the onset of the air war; and 3) the ground war and its denouement. The victory came with such merciless ease that on the winners' side, the deeper levels of experience (nobility, sacrifice, endurance and so on) were not engaged. The victors now celebrate mostly their...