Word: chaining
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Anyone with the least understanding of the retail sector knows what a sham this argument is. The Federated chain (Lazarus) and Allied Stores (Brown) both sell millions of dollars of Stevens products yearly with the help of millions of advertising dollars. Since so much of linen sales is done by mail, the relationship of advertising to Stevens products is clear: do not just passively reflect consumer preferences, they actively try to shape them...
...VEHICLE IN The Chain of Chance is a variation upon the conventional detective novel--one might call it a murder without a murderer--which he infuses with an inventive twist of probability theory. Civilization has grown so complex, he maintains, that it is governed only by laws of random chance. As a result, the protagonist--and the reader--is alienated from the reality he thinks he can understand and control. In the depersonalized modern world, common sense has become nearly meaningless. The effect is eerie and sobering...
...concerns, the novel remains a suspensful and realistic detective story. The author's acuity of observation and penchant for statistical minutiae makes each character convincing and interesting. A significant portion of this short novel consists of meticulous descriptions of the victims and the circumstances of their deaths, making The Chain of Chance both a forensic pathologist's delight and a challenge to armchair sleuths, because, hidden among the barrage of details are the clues to this mystery. To understand them one might have to be pre-med, but the novel's tendency toward the arcane does not greatly detract from...
...lost. The Chain of Chance's most distinctive feature, when seen in the context of Lem's body of work, is that it purports to have a solution. In the book's denouement, John unravels the mystery and at last everything becomes understandable. This may be routine for a detective story, but for Lem it is a radical break from his tradition of leaving stories open-ended...
...Chain of Chance the irony is that it is man's own civilization which has become so complex as to be beyond his understanding. Yet John succeeds in uncovering the mystery, and the author's resolution appears to be cogent enough to leave us feeling smugly satisfied that we know the answer. Are we willing to believe Lem, or should we suspect that he is gulling us into accepting his artifice in order to satisfy our expectation of a final solution and our need for one as well? It is not at all clear, for the novel's realism...