Word: divver
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...standpoint at odds with history. Knows work is artificial, ludicrous, does not care, or cannot help self . . . Soviet love of ballet quite different-freedom of movement, jumping, aspiring, etc. Probably otherwise under Czar." But such happy jottings were soon to be interrupted. At a mass press conference with Mussolini, Divver was jostled accidentally and raised a protesting voice; he was ejected, shouting and waving his fist, and at once became a hero back home. Too cowardly to refuse his accidental fame, Divver became Forward's expert on Italian affairs. Practice in the use of every advance-guard cliche made...
...Morgan's 18-year-old son Jimmy. An epileptic and a problem child who refuses to believe anything his tutors tell him about basic trends or the continuity of Western culture, Jimmy wears his mother down until she opens the nursery door, lets him go along with Divver on a trip to the Polish Corridor in the summer...
...doesn't take Max Divver long to demonstrate what a lost soul he is. Then, in his shame, he unburdens himself to Jimmy, confessing bitterly that he really loves his wife, that he doesn't give much of a damn for the working class, doesn't believe in Forces or in any of the things he. has pretended to believe in, and wishes to God that he had never been educated and could say what he thinks...
...summer wears away; the Polish Corridor becomes the hottest spot in Europe. A frantic cable comes from Jimmy's mother. An old terror returns to him: he may have another epileptic seizure any day. But before he does, the Forces of history converge on Mell and kill Max Divver, their disillusioned celebrant, as he is making a last confused and furious effort to acquire personal dignity...
...Change is something like Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, and like that book it is written with affection for the subject. But it has an art of its own that makes it rich and strange. The writer's humor can be bland and surreptitious, or broad and biting. Of Divver's punditry: "His views were not original, except in the field of military strategy and logistics...