October 2023
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In a Lonely Place is a carefully written, economically directed, suspenseful, and sometimes menacing piece of work. Filmed in 1949, released in 1950, it has aged very well. I've seen it four or five times over the years, and it improves with each viewing. Humphrey Bogart is true to his natural bent as a half-crazed,…
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Here follows a list of some of the many activities that I definitely, excruciatingly, do not wish to perform before I kick the ol' kettle. My life is perfectly complete as it stands, and I feel no psychological pressure to engage in any of these anxiety-ridden ventures. Nope, all the pressure is on the side…
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I first encountered the word "provider" in its positive sense as a virtual synonym for "mensch": "he was a good provider; he took care of his wife and his kids and his aged parents and even his employees" (if he had any). But nowadays the word has been stripped of its warm associations and has…
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I suppose I fell an uncountable number of times in the days of my youth, but to these floppings I paid no mind. I started to take note during my first year in Ithaca, when, a creature of sidewalks and "gutters," I fell splat on my face in the slopes and snows far above Cayuga's…
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Both partisans and skeptics of Jane Austen's Emma will remember Harriet Smith, the young woman who becomes the object of Emma Woodhouse's officious matchmaking. Harriet's ancestry is explained by JA; she is "the natural daughter of someone" — that is, she is an illegitimate child of obscure origin. Harriet's patronizing friend Emma imagines, without a…