ellauri048.html on line 738: Bellow's characterisation of his father's background is one of the most enjoyable strands of the book and an interesting companion to Saul's fiction. His father, Abraham, is characterised by his grandson as a crook and a tyrant, who despised his youngest son's literary ambitions and pummelled him – and all his sons – until Saul grabbed his hand mid-air one day and said, "I'm a married man, Pa. You cannot hit me anymore." In adulthood, on the rare occasions Bellow tried to talk to his father about his upbringing, Saul would shake him off and say rather pointedly: "You shouldn't blame your parents for your faults." Bellow smiles. "And he said this to me, a therapist no less! His father loved him, but it was a tumultuous relationship and my grandfather was mercurial as hell."
ellauri083.html on line 159: The "first chapter summons up the days when the world was first settled, in 874 AD—for that is the year when the Norsemen arrived in Iceland, and one of the book's wry conceits is that no other world but Iceland exists. ... The book is set in the early decades of the twentieth century but ... Independent People is a pointedly timeless tale. It reminds us that life on an Icelandic croft had scarcely altered over a millennium". As the story begins, Bjartur ("bright" or "fair") has recently managed to put down the first payment on his own farm, after eighteen years working as a shepherd at Útirauðsmýri, the home of the well-to-do local bailiff, a man he detests. The land that he buys is said to be cursed by Saint Columba, referred to as "the fiend Kolumkilli", and haunted by an evil woman named Gunnvör, who made a pact with Kólumkilli.
ellauri106.html on line 179: Today the lengthy obituaries are all laudatory. Tomorrow or the next day I can safely predict that the backlash will begin with harshly critical essays. Leading the way will be Feminists critics who will denounce the whole cabal of elite white men as the custodians of the literary cannon. More pointedly they will charge Roth with toxic masculinity and misogyny and will come loaded for bear with plenty of quotes from his work. They will also have the example and testimony of his two ex-wives, both of whom showed up thinly disguised in his novels—a Margaret Martinson in When She Was Good and actress Clare Bloom in I Married a Communist. Bloom penned her own bitter exposé of their 14-year-long relationship and four year marriage in he memoir Leaving the Doll’s House.
ellauri109.html on line 709: Dryden's poem, "An Essay upon Satire," contained a number of attacks on King Charles II, his mistresses and courtiers, but most pointedly on the Earl of Rochester, a notorious womaniser. Rochester responded by hiring thugs who attacked Dryden whilst walking back from Will's Coffee House (a popular London coffee house where the Wits gathered to gossip, drink and conduct their business) back to his house on Gerrard Street. Dryden survived the attack, offering £50 for the identity of the thugs placed in the London Gazette, and a Royal Pardon if one of them would confess. No one claimed the reward.
ellauri161.html on line 1137: So what was the point? I say as disappointedly as the Korean ladies listening to a reading of Goethe's Werther's Leiden. What? He shot himself? So he never got to shag the woman of his heart? What a drag. And threw the rookie historian out on her ear.
ellauri346.html on line 250: Former Ukrainian MP Illya Kyva has been assassinated in Russia by Ukraine's SBU security service, law enforcement sources have told BBC Ukraine. - "How can I negotiate with a murderer like Putin? Setting aside that for a moment, how can I negotiate with the Russians? How can I debate about the people who reside in cities and villages that are occupied? We can't dictate where a person should live, what language they should speak, or which flag they should respect. Who are we to decide these things?" - Zelenskyy pointedly questioned.
xxx/ellauri167.html on line 592: To his advantage, however, was the fact that he had microphone access whenever he wanted it. But at a key moment, he pointedly chose not to take the mic. When Ribicoff made his crack about “Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago” from the dais, Daley stood up and shouted from the floor “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home!” The forceful exclamation, shown on live TV, was later deciphered by lip readers. Friends said Daley called Ribicoff not a “fucker,” but a “faker.” Enemies suggested he had called him not a “Jew” but a “kike.” The CBS newsman who was closest simply reported that Daley had gone bright red with anger.
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