Word: reader
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alternative newspapers have grown old with their original audience, the postwar baby-boom generation now moving into its 30s. At Denver's Straight Creek Journal and Seattle's Weekly, the average reader's age is 35. "Politics doesn't sell on the front page since Viet Nam," says Bruce Brugmann, 43, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian (circ. 35,000). "We put politics on the front page, but we have to highlight it with where to find the best sandwich...
IRONICALLY just these observations allow the reader to understand what Matthiessen means and how he can come by his beliefs and his escapes. The Himalayan world he depicts is the enactment of his religion. Seen through Western eyes the Himalayan people calmly progress through prayers and days alike, buffetted by little and infrequently alarmed. Their life isn't meaningless, but neither is its meaning marked. It just is, which is precisely Matthiessen's point...
...achievement; the book shows that. But the book itself is an even greater one. It accomplishes what Matthiessen tried so hard to gain for himself. Even though it is about mountains a world away five years ago it is a narrative of the present, it takes the reader that close...
...ministry of Economics to a staked assassin. Events are connected enigmatically--Maldonado returns from his operation to his Jewish wife who is rocking mutely in a nun's habit; a man killed in a meat freezer scrawls the word "nun" in blood on the glass door. The reader, along with Maldonado, wonders whether and why things occur. All the disjointed events arrive at a climactic suspension--Maldonado's second attempt on the President's life. The reader never discovers whether Maldonado is successful the second time...
Fuentes has not changed, however, is in his use of surrealism to express confusion and to perplex the reader. Although this technique is annoying at times, it does not distract from The Hydra Head's quick pace. If the bizarre seems pointless, sometimes, it does not inhibit one's desire to know where it all leads. Ultimately, the novel is frustrating: more and more it tells the reader less and less. Unlike traditional thrillers, the final scene leaves one with new questions rather than resolved mysteries...