Word: upone
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fact is, students have no basis upon which to trust the decisions made by students they didn't vote for, or who were the only game in town...
Hazy, smooth, pastel and pretty, the book jacket of Dreaming by the Book was clearly designed to make the potential reader reflect upon the pleasant possibilities of imagination. The author, Elaine Scarry, is our own Cabot professor of aesthetics; her impressive list of honors and credentials attest to the feasibility of the academic study of beauty, which might seem too slippery and subjective to bear such scrutiny. Perhaps we should instead see the seeming incomprehensibility of beauty as an invitation to further study; Scarry has a slim volume on this subject out right now, entitled On Beauty and Being Just...
...examples, one's ideas will have validity. Scarry quotes liberally from some authors (like Homer and Flaubert) and occasionally from other poets or novelists to support her airy-sounding ideas. But the skeptical reader's sensibilities will hesitate to accept these categories, mechanisms, formats, processes or other structures imposed upon the activity of imagination guided by words. Dreaming by the Book is a rather formulaic approach to an extremely free-flowing activity...
...Scarry's writing is not always lucid. She sometimes lets an idea wrap itself around and strangle a sentence. The bold argument laid out in the first chapters of the book gives way to examinations of devices that seem imposed upon, rather than found in literary works. Her system of categories makes her argument seem more complete and scientific than it could possibly be, and the reader is disappointed...
...director, Schumacher effectively conveys the down-and-dirty grit of New York, but as writer he should have spent more time exploring the down-and-dirty grit of his protagonists. The screenplay itself does precious little to expand upon the two stereotypes of a bigot and a drag queen. That task falls into the actors hands. Fortunately, De Niro and Hoffman have very capable hands indeed, and they almost manage to elevate the script in spite of itself not quite, but almost...