Word: unwritten
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There are moments like these in the stories when Oates is simply too clever, too conscious of being a writer. More often, her tyranny relaxes into an awesome demonstration of control. One of the most remarkable stories in the collection is a series of "Unmailed, Unwritten Letters," conceived by a young woman to be sent to her parents, husband, and lover, also his wife and daughter, a genius who at six wrote "tidy, little poems like Blake's." The sense of desperateness and guilt that these letters evoke taints the final fragment to her lover with an almost ghoulish bitterness...
Even pedestrians in Manhattan, says Wolff, cooperate with fellow walkers. They might not exchange pleasantries like their small-town counterparts, but they "do take into account the qualities and predicaments of other pedestrians in regulating their own behavior." For instance, they generally follow certain unwritten rules of sidewalk traffic. Some of these parallel the written laws of the road; some simply reflect good old-fashioned chivalry...
Among the unwritten rules: people moving on sidewalks, like vehicles moving on roadways, should keep to the right;* elderly citizens have the right of way over their youngers; deference is also due cripples, couples and tourists, such as somebody meandering across the pavement to photograph the Empire State Building. (Wolff is uncertain whether women are accorded the right of way over men, but these days that question might have less to do with sidewalk standards than with the feminist revolution...
...born and irredeemably ugly; his voice has all the soothing qualities of a tugboat whistle. His brocade jackets and frilled shirts merely reinforce the impression of 19th century decadence. As a performer, Stander has only one style: the anthropoidal comic-heavy. Nor have two decades on Hollywood's unwritten blacklist enhanced his marketability. But Stander, who left the U.S. in 1964, has achieved extraordinary film success in Europe. He won raves as the mordant mobster in Roman Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (1966). In Italy these days, no spaghetti western is complete without his brutal snarl. He will...
While discrimination exists on all levels of the economy, the focus of attention lately has been on the blue-collar trades. In the unionized trades there is an unwritten rule: the higher the pay, the harder for blacks to get in and get ahead. At latest count, in the high-paying trades-plumbers, sheet-metal workers, electrical workers, elevator constructors-less than 1% of the workers are black. Philadelphia counted proportionately more blacks in skilled trades 70 years ago than it does today, although its black population has increased...