Word: vaguest
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Simenon's failure here is due to the lack of any coherent understanding of the craft of writing--or in this case, dictating, which only resembles real writing insofar as it is printed. Simenon starts with only the vaguest notions of what he will do and after a certain prescribed period of time (in the case of Letters to My Mother, one day), finishes. In that time a simple story-line emerges, sustained by the most elementary event-to-event, casual thinking. Ironically this dearth of complexity is the peculiar strength of his roman policier: the name Maigret itself connotes...
...were caught unprepared, and have fallen behind in the processing. "Organization!" scoffed Stuart Callison, an Agency for International Development official assigned to Pendleton. "We beat the first load of refugees here by an hour and a half. That's how organized we are. I haven't the vaguest idea what's going on. I get all my news out of the Los Angeles Times." William Wild, another AID official who is in charge of the Pendleton operation, considered himself in business once he was able to lease a small data-processing machine for 90 days...
...students' career aspirations show only the vaguest commitment to social welfare and reveal a desire to play safe. The shift away from graduate study in academic disciplines and toward the professions, particularly law and medicine, shows the primacy of role and allows them to retain an ambiguity in their attitude toward class. While some students seek to escape organizational constraint by pursuing careers as writers or artists, few search for a life of creative activity. When pressed, many of these free souls will reveal the ambition of celebrity. A commitment to significant work does not distinguish them from the aspirants...
...story written in part by Mark Lane, the lawyer and assassination-conspiracy buff. Real names of persons and places are used except where they would be most crucial. The conspirators-Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Geer and John Anderson among them-are assigned fictional names, but only the vaguest identides. Ryan, the force behind the plot, is wealthy; Lancaster apparently is a maverick intelligence operative; Geer, an elderly man who has oil interests. Such sketchiness satisfies the requirements of neither history nor drama...
...himself as the premier swimmer in the Harvard fleet of standout mermen. Yntema, who ignored with an indifferent composure the frenetic excitement of Harvard's drive to a share of the Eastern League swimming title, eyeing with an unvarying determination his singular objective, refusing to be distracted for the vaguest moment by the hullabaloo swirling around him as Harvard achieved swimming parity and superiority for the first time in over a decade, keeping his head when all around him were losing theirs in the excultance of success, refusing to shave down for even the championship meet with Yale, refusing...