Word: rigidities
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Woiwode's polished images evoke whole landscapes and interiors. But on occasion they leave his characters as rigid as snapshots. Like the subjects of most candid portraits, the Neumillers sometimes appear querulous and unfocused, refugees wrenched by the camera from the context of their lives. The stop-and-start chapters abort their growth and development; some family members are simply dropped or disappear inexplicably for hundreds of pages. Though they struggle with life's standard challenges and disappointments, the stolid Neumillers are rarely compelling enough to carry the massive burden of their saga...
...unofficial, because no one wants to provoke a crisis with an official count) no longer bears much relationship to the unwritten National Covenant of 1943, which established ratios. The Moslems, once a minority, now total 1.8 million and exceed Maronite Christians (1.2 million), who still wield majority power. This rigid confessional formula has become a straitjacket, institutionalizing communal dissension rather than easing it. Yet despite the continuing bloodshed and the threat of anarchy, politicians in the bitterly divided nation have largely proved neither powerful, courageous nor selfless enough to agree on a practical alternative...
...television to depict an Irish family in the middle of brahmin-land as having to be biting and aggressive would be an admission by one of America's largest corporations that this is indeed a closed society with a rigid class structure. It is much more politic for CBS to push forward the benign version of the American dream now found in Beacon Hill. It makes for a pretty show, an optimistic show, one that shows off little but the talents of the costume designer...
Since she declared a state of emergency eight weeks ago, India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has suspended civil liberties, imposed rigid press censorship and arrested at least 20,000 people (some estimates go as high as 60,000), including a number of opposition political leaders and dissident members of her ruling Congress Party. Last week, in the harshest step toward authoritarianism since the original clampdown, Indira rammed through Parliament a bill that would end her current battle with the courts by changing-retroactively-the election laws she had been convicted of violating...
...contain any flat-out promise to obey them. A debate quickly followed over whether the distinction in phrasing marked a genuine retreat by Mrs. Gandhi's government from censorship or was a subtle way of allowing foreign journalists to sign, save face but still remain under rigid controls...