Word: yarn
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Seven British soldiers in postwar occupied Germany are assigned to guard the obsolete, World War II Bofors antiaircraft cannon. Their mission is obviously a useless exercise but the soldiers nonetheless mount their guard in a battered barracks, awaiting the dawn. Thus unwinds a tightly spun military yarn that has a touch of allegory. Shrouded in canvas, the Bofors gun is never seen in its entirety; though it orders their lives, it remains irrelevant to the soldiers, who blandly carry on their battle with boredom. So painstakingly does The Bofors Gun record the brutalizing effects of military routine that...
...impregnate his young wife. The millionaire flags down a 17-year-old seaman and an aging girl-about-town (Jeanne Moreau) and puts them in his sumptuous bedchamber. The sailor, he cackles, will one day tell the story of his exploit-and for the first time in history, that yarn will be founded on truth...
...reforms to get out of hand. Though the government has formally abolished censorship, for example, it asks editors not to write about some 12,000 items on a list of "state secrets." The list includes such seemingly harmless subjects as the price of veal and the cost of spinning yarn; to many editors, it is censorship in another form...
Boasting qualities that are superior to the most luxurious silk fabrics, Qiana gives all the appearance of silk-from the luster of its surface yarn to its light weight, drape and color. Added to this, exotic sounding Qiana-a computerized combination of random letters-is a practical drip-dry wonder that can be machine-washed and still resist wrinkles...
TRUE GRIT, by Charles Portis. High camp comes artfully close to original Americana in this yarn of a sassy 14-year-old Arkansan heroine who avenged the murder of her daddy back in the 1870s...