Word: reader
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...Americans have learned anything about George Bush in his l4 months as President, it is that he is more complex and calculating than expected. He is open and accessible but also secretive and, at times, deceptive. He is a voracious reader of opinion polls, yet would prefer that his face not appear on the nightly news. He seems to be a warm and genuine father but is ill at ease in any bout with self-analysis...
...thing I hope the book does is have the reader say, `Sure, I recognize the type,' and see these types and recognize that these types are individuals," Leland said...
...think these people are not so different from the sophisticated urban reader as that reader might originally presume," he said...
Novels by Dame Iris Murdoch are about as sturdy and reliable as a well-made trench coat. The reader can count on several things from these lengthy dissections of the British intelligentsia, and the new installment, her 24th, is no exception. One can be sure, for instance, that demon lust and his faithful servant, self-deception, will make fools of the witty, wise and powerful. There will probably be a maddeningly masochistic woman and a childish, manipulative man. A young person, usually a girl, will act as an unsparing force of nature...
...easy, far too easy, to poke fun at these idiosyncrasies. What Murdoch can do surpassingly well is move a narrative. Once caught in her grip, the reader flies through myriad complications, signal switches and genuine surprises. The Message to the Planet is not her strongest book. It chronicles the decline of Marcus Vallar, a charismatic man who may have mysterious healing powers. But the central figure is a tiresome young don, Alfred Ludens, who is preoccupied with genius -- he is writing a book about Leonardo -- and obsessed by Vallar. The subplot involves a pigheaded painter and his attempts to maintain...