Word: vane
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Early in World War II a character called Alistair Digby-Vane-Trumpington (in Evelyn Waugh's Put Out More Flags) asked his wife if she would mind if he joined the Commandos: "They have special knives and Tommy guns and knuckle-dusters; they wear rope-soled shoes...
Like Digby-Vane-Trumpington, many writers cannot be kept from rope ladders; they love to swarm up the icy cliffs of fiction, creep up on reality in their rope-soled shoes and knock it out of commission with those knuckle-dusters. In the van of these shock troops is British Novelist Alistair MacLean, who in H.M.S. Ulysses (TIME, Jan. 23, 1956) showed his ability to zero in with a battery of heavy cliches, fieldstrip and assemble a character in the dark, and tell an exciting story. MacLean displays the same talents in his current operation, dealing with the eastern Mediterranean...
...Normal Vane, apparently a newcomer top the craft of playwriting, sets up his characters with contrived dialogue and them with their actions knocks them down again. The vain, colorful husband number one tells lies and most of the audience understands why; he is so pitiful that he should inspire our sympathy; but in the end he goes away unrewarded. The wife, frustrated in her quest for security, thrives on honesty so it is natural to assume that she once was in love with him; but there is never any hint of this. Husband number two, attentive and mild-mannered...
...nation's earliest general election, Maine voters will toss their traditional straws into the political wind Sept. 10. Holding the attention of most of the weather-vane watchers is the race between Maine's first Democratic governor in 20 years, Edmund S. Muskie, 42, and his Republican challenger, Willis A. Trafton Jr., a wealthy, 37-year-old attorney from Auburn. Muskie has campaigned hard on a record that some of Maine's most influential newspapers, e.g., the independent Gannett chain, have found good, while Trafton has appealed largely to Maine's Republicanism. By campaigning with...
...gentleman, he informed the startled John Neagle, but as a workingman. Yet the canvas must be splendid. It must show him lifesize, laboring honestly at his forge. And in the background must be seen the accursed jail from which providence had rescued him, its cupola topped by a weather vane of crossed keys...