Word: paranoia
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...plot" put forward by the Israelis to justify their action is at best a manifestation of national paranoia, which may yet prove to be the undoing of a nation born with the good wishes of the greater part of humanity. We are reminded that: Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall...
...this sounds modish and empty. But Margaret Atwood, alternately satirical and lyrical, is a mistress of controlled hysteria. She skillfully presses her polarized universe upon her reader and indeed upon her race. She may be excessively hard on civilization. But, as only a really gifted writer can, she turns paranoia into art, forcing her rapidly industrializing fellow countrymen - her rap idly overindustrializing world - to contemplate the hate in the bloody eye of one of their victims: the "pure pain, clear as water, an animal's at the moment the trap closes." ∙Melvin Maddocks
...agents, at the very least. Allegiances are never clear. As the years pass and the search for parts continues all over postwar Europe, loyalties fade and new, complicated patterns suggesting international business cabals emerge. Everyone seems to be a part of an incomprehensible engine whose function is to generate paranoia. Call it history; call it the modern world where science and technology change the rules faster than they can be written...
...Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired" sings to paranoia, but is so low-key that it immediately suggests a drug-induced euphoria or hypnosis. The conga opening is catchy, and the entrance of saxophone and piano on the first verse is subtle. The rest of the band sneaks in toward the end of the verse, with the same drive they displayed on "Shoot Out," here geared down only enough to keep the tune's direction and pace. The song is based on simple descending and ascending progressions, with an uneven, yet impassioned vocal--listen to Winwood's delivery of the line...
Critics like Robert Alter in Commentary have recently levelled accusations of racial paranoia at The Tenants and the works of other Jewish writers. Malamud thinks them ridiculous. "Really, there's no new mood of competition. Jews were never racist per se. I would call it a confrontation, a regrettable lack of understanding. There might be some feeling that black writers have pre-empted the field, among some white writers." He grows emphatic. "But it's a broader question. American blacks have been cheated: society owes them recognition, owes it to them to ameliorate conditions, enlarge their opportunities for fulfillment...