Word: hometowns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Suspect as the idea of basing public policy on grades and test scores--which notoriously reflect income level, race, and hometown as well as ability the most upsetting aspects of Bok's stance he deeper. It is bad enough that he as an educator, gives evidence of thinking in statistical rather than individual terms, he omits any mention of the 25 percent of these low achievers who do finish college, presumably by overcoming severe obstacles. ("It is impossible, of course," he says in passing, "to predict precisely which students will fall by the wayside.") It is worse that, in drawing...
Teammate Steve Baker calls golf "a nasty combination of concentration and physical ability." Baker, who began playing golf on a converted cow pasture renamed Rolling Acres near his New London. Ohio, hometown, thinks the demands on a Harvard golfer make it less than idyllic. Carrying your own clubs, which can weigh 30 pounds or more, for 18 to 36 holes is a "mini-marathon," for anyone he says. The team doesn't ride around in golf carts sipping martinis between tees. They also play in adverse conditions. "At home," Baker remarks, "you wouldn't think of going...
...space within the borders of his native country, may actually provide perhaps the best prototype of Theroux's style. Jack Kerouac broke out into the open road in the mid-50s with the coitus-and narcotic-addled bliss of a youth set free from the narrow confines of hometown and ceremonial life. Theroux has also journeyed on the open road, but on a far more expansive one. Encompassing both adventure and introspection, he has recorded journeys from Victoria Station to Siberia, and back, in The Old Railway Bazaar; and from South Boston to the other up of America...
...such predictability come the New Hampshire primary. ("The waitress poured another cup of coffee at the Portsmouth Diner and talk, as it tends to at this time of year, turned to politics...") Davis has a terrific feel for the mechanics of social rituals and hierarchies, and the best of Hometown uncovers a city only an insider could know. He tells of a widely believed rumor linking the handsome, popular WASP mayor to the socially prominent wife of a close Jewish friend; the "social marketplace" of Hamilton, a beauty shop frequented by women of diverse backgrounds; and, finally in the book...
...know for sure what Davis thinks about these and other provocative questions he raises because he quickly retreats into the mark of his metaphors. Concurrent with his work on Hometown, Davis supervised production of a television documentary series chronicling life in Muncie, Indiana. The programs (I have seen one) use the same style as the book--little dramas meant to illuminate the whole. The tactic does not lack merit entirely; only a crank would demand a portrait based exclusively on generalizations and "facts and figures." But Hometown rests exclusively on the evocative anecdote, the symbol instead of the substance...