Word: abed
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...MANY CRITICS have claimed, Kobo Abe is the best living Japanese novelist, it may only be because so many others (most notably Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata) have committed suicide. The irony, however, is that for the leading literary figure in Japan, Abe's writing has a remarkably Western flavor. Except for place names and a few distinctly oriental metaphors ("his thoughts shrank like a piece of fat meat plunged into boiling water"), Secret Rendezvous. Abe's sixth and most recent book could pass, like his others, for a Western novel...
...style has much in common with the fantasy of Kafka, Borges, Stanislaw Lem and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; as in Kafka's The Castle and Lem's Memoir's Found in a Bathtub, Abe's new novel presents a protagonist thrust into an absurd, alien environment with a mission he must accomplish. In the former, a gentlemen K., claiming to be a land surveyor, sets out to reach the castle, while Lem's memoir-writer must wander through endless corridors to escape from a vast underground military complex. In Secret Rendezvous, the labyrinth is an enormous hospital, and the unnamed protagonist...
...Lincoln and Douglas in his dialogue, the play might have more interest. Unfortunately, the dialogue fails to explore the characters of the two men, relying on texts of the debates to do so. As a result, The Rivalry remains nothing more than a tired rehash of textbook history. Abe Lincoln deserves better...
...fever to cool off and calm to reassert itself. It's too much, too soon. It is a good program for the 1990s, not something you have to pass in the summer of 1979. We might create a monster we can't get rid of." Agreed Abe Ribicoff: "We have the responsibility not to rush to judgment...
...head of the council finance committee, Troy challenged Mayor Abe Beame's proposed budget. The mayor counterattacked by ousting him from his party post in Queens. On the same day, Sept. 19, 1974, federal investigators paid Troy a call, bringing along a request for his tax records. He was subsequently charged with, and pleaded guilty to, filing false income tax returns and withdrawing money from estates he managed as an attorney...