Word: zeno
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...infrangible toughness of mind. Almost a decade ago, Leider's essay notes, Stella described his ambition- "to combine the abandon and indulgence of Matisse's Dance with the overall strength and sheer formal inspiration of . . . his Moroccans. " Perhaps that goal, like the target toward which Zeno's arrow flew, can never be reached...
Field's book contains - to use the last words of Ada - "much, much more." Whether by scheme or coincidence, that novel flew like Zeno's paradoxical arrow. Part 1 took up half the book. Part 2 was half of one remaining half, etc., ad infinitum. Perhaps this was Nabokov's metaphor for the inexhaustible magic of memory. Field, too, stoically accepts the fact that he can never quite reach his target. Yet he still manages to track the flight of genius...
...does he move in a much straighter line as a writer. He is unable to resist just one more illustration, even if it means forgetting the point. The topics covered in his book range from A (as in Abyssinian salt) to Z (as in Zeno of Elea). He discourses upon the rise and fall of cities since the Roman Empire, the possibilities for growing grapes in Scotland, the rules for transmitting property among the Tartars, and of course the "Revolt of our American Colonies." Smith writes: "The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused...
...Guildenstern out of their Hamlet context and making an existential comedy out of their dislocation; writing the ultimate parody of a murder mystery play and having his onstage critics sucked into the action in The Real Inspector Hound; creating a Professor of Moral Philosophy who tries to disprove Zeno's paradoxes of motion with a real hare and a real tortoise in Jumpers. Up till now, formulas like these have served Stoppard well--his plays have uniformly been among the most intelligent, enjoyable and effective theater of the last ten years. His new failure--Travesties--currently playing in London doesn...
...this sport, and thus in the vestibules of academe--where bannister-sliding should indeed have flourished--students trudge on from class to class. The more optimistic hoped at the beginning of the decade that in this university--where great minds had already solved the Konigsberg Bridge problem and Zeno's Paradox--scholars might by now have found a way to slide up bannisters. But no, with the steady evolution of Harvard College into Harvard trade school, formidable scholars have no time for the sliders but spend all their time assisting the less-daring into medical schools and law schools...