Word: alien
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...much talk of a strike this summer. The present contract runs out in July, and even players who do not favor the fixed percentage proposal are saying they will support a walkout. Naturally, the owners too are talking tough. The union proposal, says N.F.L. Negotiator Jack Donlan, is "alien to American business" and "would be tantamount to getting control" of the league. Donlan threatens a possible lockout if no agreement is reached and hints at fielding teams of nonunion rookies and free agents. Should that happen, the rich new TV deal would start with some ironically low-grade football...
...INSULT THE AMBASSADOR" is the latest weapon in President Reagan's foreign policy arsenal. When Nicaragua's new envoy arrived in Washington last week, he was greeted not with the usual diplomatic niceties but with a note scolding his government for "inviting alien influences and philosophies into the hemisphere. "Tragically, the hostile attitude adopted by Reagan and his advisors toward the Nicaraguan Sandinistas could easily push a country open to friendly relations with the United States into the Soviet camp...
...rest of the team struggled for a period of time before finding its court legs and/or brains. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the squad apparently tried to stimulate the conditions they're likely to run into next weekend at Yale (in a slightly more significant match) Alien courts and a non-partisan crowd were already there. So, was the two-and-a-half-hour bus ride. What the Crimson added as its special contribution was anticipation of Greyhound lethargy...
Luckily, crime and the underclass are not the only element in The Dean's December. Bellow may not have achieved the great foray into the alien waters he had hoped for, but he remains brilliantly entertaining on his home turf. In particular, his characters are dazzling. Valeria Raresh, Corde's mother-in-law, for whom the Corders have traveled to Rumania (Bellow, incidentally, also went to Bucharest several years ago with his mathematician wife on a similar journey) lies in a state hospital, her face criss-crossed with tapes and tubes. After a coronary and a stroke, it is only...
Unfortunately, there is a large contingent of these plot-seekers among today's readers. Theirs is the soap-opera or bad science-fiction approach to literature. Squeeze in a sufficient number of strange romantic liaisons, family scandals, new and improved forms of alien visitors, and so on, and the actual words in which these twists are conveyed are relatively unimportant. Throw in great wars or scheming terrorists, and the author need barely be literate...