Word: vu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Instantly one is reminded of Fail Safe, Seven Days in May and various other pop-cult expressions of former doomsday fears. This sense of deja vu is enhanced by the casting of that archetypal movie star of the '50s, Burt Lancaster, as the leading trespasser on Government property. His SAC nemesis is Richard Widmark, still energizing his performances with a subtle suggestion of psychopathy. Playing the President's closest advisers are such good, gray actors as Melvyn Douglas, Joseph Gotten and Leif Erickson. It is all rather comforting to see these old companions in adventure from bygone matinees...
...outer offices, where the secretaries and receptionists reign, there also are flashes of déjà vu. The warm and graceful figure of Mary Frances Sweeney suddenly materialized in the fifth-floor hall of the Carter transition office. She used to be administrative assistant to the late Democratic Party chairman John Bailey, a fixture in the New Frontier and Great Society. Mrs. Sweeney is now helping to restart the Democratic engine. And Evelyn Irons, who went to the White House with Joe Califano in 1965 and worked for James Schlesinger through the Republican years, will journey back...
...Gwenda, a dim young woman orphaned as a toddler and brought up by relatives in New Zealand, arrives back in Britain with her new husband, Giles. No sooner have they bought a nice house in the town of Dillmouth than Gwenda starts getting attacks of déjà vu and is clutched by a nameless dread while descending the stairs. It is soon clear to the reader, and eventually even to dim Gwenda, that she has been here before. Just as predictably, as a tiny child she saw a murder from the stairs...
Again, things blew up in Lebanon, giving the rest of the world a grim sense of déjà vu. Beirut's television station suddenly interrupted a news broadcast last Thursday to present startled viewers with the grim visage of Brigadier General Aziz Ahdab, commander of the Beirut military region. In cool, measured tones, he proclaimed a state of emergency and declared that he had just taken control of the country as Military Governor. Giving no hint as to his source of support, Ahdab called on President Suleiman Franjieh and Premier Rashid Karami to resign within 24 hours...
...leaves one with the suspicion that Mollenhoff enjoys pulling old columns from his scrapbook every so often in search of a good quote. The pace slackens especially during the last third of the narrative, where the morass of Watergate-related comings and goings leaves the reader with a "deja vu" feeling; a wish to escape from yet another version of the intrigues he has encountered many times before. The book might have benefited from less reliance on the temporal sequence of events and greater emphasis on specific incidents to illustrate the author's thesis...