Word: versions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Saigon, the police chief's arm in profile that draws a straight line through his trigger finger and by the leap of the bullet into the fear-rigid Viet Cong's brain: a crisp extinction. The weird surprise of death, the pop into non-being. In the TV version, the man falls like a short tree and his head pours neat but urgent blood upon the street, as from a vial...
...Menzies discovered that he enjoyed wielding power from the shadows, and he did not need or want public acclaim. Even his three wives knew only that he had some connection to the government. Between the wars he was deputy to "C," as the head of the SIS (Britain's version of the CIA) is titled. In 1939 he was appointed "C" himself, moving into an office that was connected to his living quarters by a hidden door and passageway...
That, however, does not keep him from rhapsodizing about an instrument he describes as an overgrown version of the xylophone, nor from doggedly pursuing his lonely calling. The New Jersey-born Stevens, 34, was first enchanted as a teenager by the distinctive sound of the marimba, the glowing, burnished, unpercussive tone that wafts from the four-plus-octave wooden instrument when it is struck with mallets. "I had never heard such a full and beautiful tone," recalls Stevens, who had been a high school rock drummer. "I could do all the rhythm things, and I also had melody...
...Western mix of charm and sermonizing. The effect was apparent during the December summit with Ronald Reagan. Alternately jovial and argumentative, combining sharp intelligence with a homey touch and playing to the camera in the most effective way -- by seeming to ignore it -- he came across as a Kremlin version of the Great Communicator. Add an attractive, strong-willed wife, and the picture of an American-style politician is complete...
...oratory. That, plus a natural flair for speaking, has produced a man who is considered the finest orator of any Soviet leader since Lenin (who was also trained as a lawyer). Gorbachev's phraseology is not remarkable, or at least does not read well in translation. The English version of Perestroika, published in the U.S. just before the December summit, is blandly general. But in a Gorbachev speech, as TV viewers around the world have discovered, phrases that seem flat on the printed page suddenly come to life...