Word: reader
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Among other stories during the year that provoked especially heavy reader response were our selection of America's best teachers; the story and psychological analysis of the Texas mass murderer, Charles Whitman; the cover story on Danny Escobedo and the drastic changes taking place in U.S. criminal law; and the ode to middle age, starring Lauren Bacall. Essay moved into its second year with its usual catholicity of concern, ranging from today's philosophers to suicide. This week the section salutes a new year by attempting a new device: an essay in play form, written by Stefan Kanfer...
Esquire magazine ran a full-page color portrait of the Three Wise Men seen as contemporaries: they turned out to be Evangelist Billy Graham, Playboy Hugh Hefner and the psychedelic professor, Timothy Leary. Cosmopolitan advised readers suffering from "holiday neurosis" to consult a psychiatrist for Christmas. The lead piece in the Reader's Digest concerned a housewife so exhausted by her Christmas chores that she finally broke down alongside her dishwasher: "Tears filled my eyes. Suddenly, it all seemed too much: the dirty dishes, the too-tight schedule. Christmas didn't seem worth...
...clever man in the usual sense. He was certainly no intellectual and read little but the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest and a western or two. He was not imaginative, and perhaps this was just as well; unlike his friend George Patton, he never developed fantasies of being a reincarnation of one of Alexander the Great's captains. Nor could he speak, as Douglas MacArthur could, like Henry V before Harfleur. Yet the conclusion is inevitable that the war was too serious to be left to anyone but this general...
...name of mine, which is just about three thousand years old and was never changed in all that time, as who would change a name that simply means House (Ker), in the Field (Ouac)." Yet the bounce and burble of Kerouac's gusto and dropout grammar carry the reader along his wacky safari. Actually, Kerouac claims that it was less safari than satori (the Japanese zen term for sudden illumination), although it is not clear just what the satori conveyed...
Happily, he got his armorial bearings in Brest (and a motto to match: "Love, Work, Suffer"), though he made no headway in claiming the barony that is said to go with the name. It is fortunate, too, for the reader, that Kerouac lost his own bearings so often: amusingly drunken cafe brawls, busted suitcases tied up with neckties, lost planes, overcharging tarts and mercenary French petite bourgeoisie. Kerouac is an engaging fellow. Brave, too. At one point, he undertook to explain to goggle-eyed Parisians that he speaks purer French than they, because "I roll...