Word: reader
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Constant Reminder I have to say to you, Reader Bob Mauger [June 25]: If you really have to allude to World War II to talk about excessive oil waste and ask what country started that mess, I could as well ask you now what country it was that wasted a great deal of oil in a useless war more than 20 years after the one you mentioned. But it's not the past that counts, but the present and the future. And the fact is that fewer than 250 million Americans spend more than one-third of the world...
Hutchinson vs. Proxmire and Wolston vs. Reader's Digest Association (1979), Time Inc. vs. Firestone (1976). A scientist whose publicly funded research had been ridiculed as wasteful by a U.S. Senator, a former Government translator who had been cited for contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Soviet espionage, and a prominent Florida socialite embroiled in a highly publicized divorce were all held not to be "public figures" as libel plaintiffs. The court ruled that someone must "thrust" himself into a prominent public controversy in order to become a public figure. In effect, these decisions made...
...author's capacity for developing his characters' humanity forces the reader to empathize with all of them--the wealthy white Europeans, black African cab drivers or Asian shopkeepers. His humanity does not extend, however, to his women characters--nymphomaniacs on whom he vindictively inflicts sexual abuse and mutilation...
...Shiva's persistent sardonic tone undermines his anecdotes' effectiveness. The reader tires quickly of his smug arrogance, and yearns for some affirmative statement about Africa. Everyone on the "dark continent" seems to be a caricature--all racist and drugged white tourists, or insufferably dogmatic bureaucrats...
...work has two other major flaws. First, Shiva presents no connecting analysis to link his anecdotes. This approach aggravates the reader's impatience with Naipaul's tone--as he becomes increasingly weary from traveling overland, so the reader becomes more tired of nasty asides...