Word: conceits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...report that the answers to the burning questions about changes, so far, are yes and no. The public and banquet rooms at "21" are nearly the same, but they are brighter and fresher. An eccentric addition to the lobby is a life-size wooden horse, a 19th century conceit that is the pet purchase of Cogan. The more sweeping changes were made in the brand new kitchens, and despite some lapses, the food has generally improved...
...FUROR over Nicaragua, the transformation of a cartographer's flyspeck (largest of the Central American republics, but what does that mean?) into a superpower obsession, turns on a simple conceit: We don't know anything about Nicaragua, but we do know exactly what is good for it. What we generally mean when we talk about what is best for others is what is best...
...walk in the woods, between U.S. Negotiator Paul Nitze and Soviet Delegate Yuli Kvitsinsky, during arms-control talks in Geneva in 1983. His wry and engaging new work at the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Conn., persuasively imagines the human fabric of a similar fictional enterprise. Blessing's conceit is that the Soviet negotiator, far from a stereotypical xenophobe, is worldly, glib and cynical, while the American newcomer is stuffy, dogged, socially inept but passionately idealistic about averting a nuclear horror. This divergence triggers a very funny opening scene: the Soviet makes friendly overtures -- "Formality is simply anger with...
Third, it insults the "slaves" themselves to refer to them as such. Grossman unconsciously reflects the bourgeois liberal conceit that any standard of living which does not match the American middle class is worthless--the equivalent of slavery. This conceit is often expressed in terms of genuine sympathy and a desire for greater equality (though not at one's own expense), yet it inevitably carries an undertone of contempt: sympathy for the poor Mexican grounded in the judgment that his life is not worth living...
...complications of The Counterlife ripple out from a central conceit. A man with a heart condition finds that the medication he must take renders him impotent. Hence Henry Zuckerman, 39, faces the bleak prospect of life without any more after-work office trysts with his alluring assistant. Similarly, Henry's famous older brother Nathan, 45, cannot marry an Englishwoman named Maria and create both the child and the settled life that, after three failed marriages, he now desperately wants. The only solution in both cases is bypass surgery. The Zuckerman brothers face the same difficult choice, but for diametrically opposed...