Word: instinctively
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chance for the playwright to mouth off and strike a number of disparate poses: the poker-playing resident of Vermont, the city boy who likes London tea shops, the gunner who belongs to both the N.R.A. and the A.C.L.U. and the provocateur who holds that women have no instinct for compromise and negotiation. Ranging widely, Mamet allows that "I am, by nature and profession, a browser." With the expanded confidence that comes with success and fame, he ambles in where Broadway and Hollywood angels fear to tread. It is fun to watch him keep his balance...
...Congressman, diplomat, Republican Party chairman, Vice President and presidential candidate, he was always the sort of politician who fretted about the consequences of a misstep. For Bush, therefore, slow is better than fast and standing pat is often the safest posture. Once he replaced Ronald Reagan, Bush's instinct was to apply the brakes to the juggernaut of improved U.S.-Soviet relations, to take the turns very cautiously and perhaps even to pull over on the side of the road and study the map for a while...
...detractors say, perhaps unfairly, that if you put Gagosian and the rest of his ilk in a bag and shook it for a week you wouldn't get an ounce of connoisseurship. But that is not what counts. What does count is the instinct for when to grab the chicken, the hot artist, and get a lock on his or her work...
That is snobbery, of course, and a reader addicted to another sort of trash -- detective stories, say -- must distrust his instinct to ridicule horror novels. But in each genre there is good trash and bad trash, and King's does not seem very good. Mention this to a fan -- young, intelligent, well read -- and the reply is the same as is heard, above the level of pop lit, when one more dismal fiction by Joyce Carol Carol Oates appears: "Yes, but you should read the early books...
...from contact, the scope of the tragedy on Oakland's I-880 was unknown, and it had been impossible for reporters to convey the full flavor of what life was like for 6 million residents of the Bay Area on a night they will never forget. "The instinct of journalists is to have it tidy," says Brokaw. "In this case there were many loose ends even at the end of the night...