Word: vastness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sadly, this sort of fine writing, which Barthelme once piled up in quantity in the vast golden junkyards that were his books, stands out all too starkly in Great Days. Barthelme has chosen to contract his appeal to a limited audience, and move toward obscurantism. The self-consciousness engendered by the huge welter of 20th-century literary criticism inhibits Barthelme, forces him to kill his prose with refinement. Where are the barbarians...
...Vast amounts of money were and are dispensed to buy, bribe or bully the loyalty of many Third World students. William Corson, the intelligence historian, cites one former CIA official as saying in 1976. "By 1985 we'll own 80 per cent of the Iranian government's second and third-level officials." One can almost see Ayatollah Khomeini's beard turn a whiter shade of grey. This ridiculous statement follows from the agency's incurable optimism about its own power and the success of its programs. The official failed to note that once in place only about one ex-student...
...crushed coal and sand suspended on a column of air inside a superhot container-promises ultimately to make combustion more efficient while cutting down on pollutants. It is now in the experimental stage, but has yet to be made applicable to large-scale commercial operations. Unlocking oil from the vast deposits of shale rock in the West at present is uneconomical, produces gigantic piles of ash, and uses too much valuable water. But tests indicate that oil may be burned out of the shale underground without adding much to pollution...
Under the vast idea called Islam, which the faithful look to for spiritual nourishment in their numerous ways, an equally vast, rich life passes, as detailed and as complex as any. For comprehension of that life Westerners need what Orientalist Scholar Louis Massignon called a science of compassion, knowledge without domination, common sense not mythology. In Iran and elsewhere Islam has not simply "returned"; it has always been there, not as an abstraction or a war cry but as part of a way people believe, give thanks, have courage and so on. Will it not ease our fear to accept...
...Graham Lancaster's The Nuclear Letters (Atheneum; 233 pages; $8.95), a comparable quantity of hot material (plutonium-239) is lifted in 1972 from the Government's vast storage center in Washington State. Thereafter, a series of warnings descends on Western heads of state. Each communique threatens retaliation with four implosion devices if the respective addressees intervene in the affairs of states ranging from Uganda to Zaïre. Where do the letters come from? What nation or individual has the bombs? In what cause...