Word: impedimenta
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Those who like their fiction accompanied by a good deal of bookish impedimenta will find almost more than they can handle in Dictionary of the Khazars. Not only does it pretend to reassemble and update its imaginary 1691 predecessor, but it also comes in two forms, a male and a female edition, which differ in only one passage of just under 15 lines of text. Most astonishingly, this novel, translated from the original Serbo-Croatian, has ) become a best seller in France and Germany; its Yugoslav author, Milorad Pavic, 59, a professor of literary history at the University of Belgrade...
...difficulties that ought to make the work unreadable. The setting is a capacious apartment house in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. Each of Perec's 99 chapters takes place in a different room or locale in the building. Scrupulous attention is paid to the furnishings, wallpaper, paintings, knickknacks and impedimenta in each new scene. The time is shortly before 8 p.m. on June 23, 1975. That is when the action begins and when it ends. In other words, this book has no forward movement, no fundamental plot...
...party's foremost orators suffered severely with a stutter in his youth. In freshman Latin class at a Catholic high school, recitation was particularly difficult for young Joe. "Jimmy O'Neill, a great prankster, hung me with the nickname Impedimenta, Biden recalls. "I was the impediment." Over the next few years, the youngster shook his affliction. "I forced myself. I memorized passages and practiced a cadence." Despite the speech problem, Biden had the good looks and sincere geniality that won friends. "I always knew I had the ability to persuade people," he recalls...
More than one-third of the misdemeanor complaints that come to the Columbus police are now settled in this way-without judges, lawyers, and other legal impedimenta. Some 100 other municipalities are experimenting with similar programs, which seem particularly appropriate for disputes involving people who are neighbors or are otherwise fated to have a continuing relationship. For such citizens, winner-take-all court decisions may leave only heightened anger; mediation, by contrast, seeks to cut small problems down to size, or "make the forum fit the fuss," as U.S. Assistant Attorney General Maurice Rosenberg puts...
Given such impedimenta, Morgan's quixotic search for his free spirit is the stuff of comedy, and Tyler plays much of his story just that way. Luckily, her hero is as amusing as he is misguided. He tells an opera story to a bedridden daughter: "Don Giovanni encounters a statue and invites it home to supper." He complains to Emily about Bonny's handling of the family money: "We never see it never buy anything inspiring with it, but it's there, all right, for things that don't show-new slate roof tiles...