Word: gossip
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Another student-the only one of the nine who said he had taken LSD "fairly frequently-talked at length about what made him retreat to drugs. Planes of talk range from functional, housekeeping exchanges through gossip, banter, ideological disputes, to metaphysical discussions, he said, and it is not difficult for two people to fix themselves at the same point on this scale of conversation levels. But there is another dimension to communication, where mutuality is almost impossible to achieve, he said. That is intimacy, an "ultimate intimacy not obtained by shared confessions of guilts, ambitions, Oedipus complexes, or secrets...
There is no design to The Dorp, no misguided attempt to unify it around a central character or theme. It all flaps as loosely (and engagingly) as the gossip columns of a small-town newspaper. The author obediently follows the ancient code of the village novelist. Her spinsters come in only two styles: dotty or drunk. Her clergyman predictably wrestles with doubt. The young girls are either uptight virgins or "fast." Most of the time the novel seems to take place-and to be written-around the turn of the century...
...habits, character and foibles. The public's curiosity is insatiable, and often for good reason. If a politician behaves badly in private matters, he might act the same way in his public duties. That, at any rate, is the theory that has always linked scandal and history, low gossip and high statesmanship...
Even if they are surrounded by enemies ready to pounce at their first lapse, public figures can get away with a lot if their misdeeds are only a matter of gossip. The U.S. President, in particular, is well insulated against excessively prying eyes. Warren Harding employed the Secret Service to keep watch over his liaisons in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt's affair with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer, was successfully kept out of print even though it almost broke up his marriage. Washington gossips amused themselves with stories about John Kennedy's attentiveness...
...Senator's political and personal plans. The two, it was said, were entangled. Last week McCarthy, 53, made explicit an earlier ambiguous announcement by declaring he would not seek re-election to the Senate next year on any ticket in Minnesota. Columnist Drew Pearson primed Washington's gossip-go-round by reporting that McCarthy "has decided to make a complete break with the past and leave not only the Senate but his wife Abigail...