Word: wholes
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...They do not disappoint, although the movie, while effective in portraying the complications of any life lived publicly, is on the whole less eloquent than its principals. It is structured on the belief that we need an expository guide to get the complexities of the Tolstoy's life, offered in the form of Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), a nervous, good-hearted young secretary sent to the Tolstoy's country estate to help Leo with his papers. Valentin arrives as a pawn of the Countess' sworn enemy, the exiled Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), who urges him to keep vigilant...
...five sections, Bolaño’s odd-footed parsing of racial and radical politics from New York City has a Kafkaesque absurdity about it (cf. “Amerika”). The world Fate inhabits is awkwardly fleshless, but the details he chooses can illuminate whole parallel universes; “[T]he Mohammedan Brotherhood caught his attention because they were marching under a big poster of Osama bin Laden. They were all black and they were all wearing black leather jackets and black berets and sunglasses, which gave them a vague resemblance to the [Black] Panthers, except...
...this day, mirrors the structure of “The Savage Detectives” in their ephemeral disinterest. Detectives, bodyguards, politicians, and prophets float to the surface and sink back again into an ocean of brutality, where a phantom mental patient desecrates churches and young girls are swallowed whole by unmarked cars in the Mexican night. With its medically precise descriptions of the symptoms and scenery of murder, the Part About the Crimes is a labor of agony and transcendence...
...cast seems too nauseous or too stupid to see through. The Part About Archimboldi is the novel’s most ambitious section, and it’s most beautiful. The novelist is Arturo Belano’s kindred spirit, a secret brother who seems to absorb the whole weight of his tragic experience—from his time in the Werhmacht on the apocalyptic Eastern Front to his haunting stay in a rest home for the demented—with a consciousness that remains totally opaque but for his books. But he’s more a symbol than...
...Rose ’11, leader of the IOP survey program, said that the disconnect between the approval ratings of Obama’s job performance and his handling of specific issues may be a result of people agreeing with Obama’s general message as a whole but “feel[ing] frustrated because not much is getting done.” Rose used health care legislation as an example, referring to one of the bill’s amendments that would add more restrictions on abortions offered through insurance plans...