Word: unreality
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Stephens at times finds his relations with younger students somewhat unreal. He belongs, essentially, to a different social and political generation from most current undergraduates. In the spring of 1968, when King was assassinated, Detroit exploded in rage, and Stephens was preparing to enter Harvard as a freshman, today's freshman class members were sitting attentively in the third grade of elementary school. "At times, I feel like a relic," Stephens says. Still, he adds that he appreciates the respect others at Harvard have shown him. Oftentimes, Stephens says, other students ask him his opinion on social questions; many question...
...started out on his trail-blazing round by clipping his ball with a sand wedge as cleanly as a dandelion head and then sinking a tap-in for par. On the third hole he had "an unreal par," punching a shot from overarching tree limbs while down on his knees...
...Southern California. The book desiccated human experience. As Didion now sees it, her novel was "a way to work out my own feelings of aridity." Yet as a work of fiction, Play It As It Lays enabled the reader to taste-in Poet Wallace Stevens' phrase-"the unreal of what is real...
This capacity is the secret of Didion's power. It works again in A Book of Common Prayer, a novel whose unreal made real includes a Central American country called Boca Grande. Once more the author writes about a distressed California woman. Charlotte Douglas is the victim of a romantic idealism so hermetic that self-knowledge is impossible. The currents of revolution and privilege scarcely ruffle her hair. Incapable of reflection, Charlotte moves, therefore she is. This unexamined life is filtered through the tough mind of Grace Strasser-Mendana, Colorado-born widow of a Boca Grande plutocrat...
...funerals, rolling through the streets of the provincial capital, have become commonplace, although judicious citizens take pains to ignore the processions. Explains a local journalist: "If you don't watch the funerals and don't get involved, this place is as safe as Disneyland." And much more unreal...