Word: stoics
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...Last of the Savages (Knopf; 271 pages; $24) spans the past three decades and is larded with big themes and echoes of big American writers: the strange romanticism of Fitzgerald's class envy; a Faulknerian obsession with slavery's enduring "curse" on the South; stoic, Hemingwayesque suffering amid sexual loss; and--novelists must have some consistency in their concerns--passages of Herculean drug abuse in the manner of Jay McInerney...
Perhaps we should not judge Lisa Hathaway's stoic reaction to her daughter's tragic, untimely death. But when Hathaway states that emotion is unnatural and untruthful, we have to wonder whether Jessica had the "freedom and choice" to express fear or lack of confidence before taking off in the thin, storm-tossed air of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hathaway says it's acceptable to die in a state of joy, but we know it's not O.K. to die in a state of fright. This mother may very well believe that she would do nothing differently a second time. The question...
...film's secret star is Miep Gies, a Gentile who worked for Otto's company. Today she looks like a stoic maiden aunt; kids at a family dinner would peg her as a stodge. But that is because Hollywood teaches us to look for shining ideals in a pretty face. Gies has the plain face of true-life heroism. Each day for two years she took food, magazines and news of the war to the Franks. She persuaded them to accept Pfeffer as a boarder. When the family was seized, she boldly confronted the Nazis. She also saved Anne...
...with a single guest, he uses it with irony, as a mirror to check how very fabulous he looks. Or, after the guest has uttered some mild inanity, Kinnear stares ahead mutely, as if he'd just been whacked on the skull by a bear paw but is too stoic to wince. It's this bland poise that keeps him from blinking when film stardom stares him in the face...
...known as "the widowmaker." His father had died suddenly four years ago at age 52, and Grinkov had high blood pressure, as well as an enlarged heart. The autopsy also revealed that the skater had suffered a heart attack in the 24 hours before his death, but given his stoic nature and his high threshold of pain--he often skated with shoulder and back miseries--Grinkov might have brushed off the attack as mere discomfort. Indeed, the essence of his genius on the ice was that he sublimated his own presence to highlight the beauty of Gordeeva. "He was totally...