Call it Imperial Tourist Syndrome, a bizarre American affliction that creates its own self-sustaining dynamic.
Hazel is obsessed with an experimental, adult literary novel, "An Imperial Affliction," which was created by a David Foster Wallace-like genius.
In a genre especially created for the affliction called love, rom-coms mercilessly depict female protagonists as hapless damsels in search of a man who will miraculously do away with their problems the moment he marries them.
With her previous novel "Affliction" (it's entitled "Trouble" in America), the fallout created a furor that spread beyond the literary pages.
To the clatter, pedestrian obstacle course and store closings created by the Second Avenue subway project, add one more affliction for more than 100 families living on the East Side: no gas.
Most recently, she created a cheap, portable diagnosis system for a common eye affliction her grandfather suffers from, but which often goes undetected and leads to blindness.
In the late 1890s, Sigmund Freud (1856 1939), who had been trained as a Viennese neurologist, created a new field, psychoanalysis, which was designed to understand and treat neurotic afflictions.
Oldooz Pooyanfar, a graduate student at Simon Fraser University, created the device to improve data collection and hopefully lead to some insight into colony collapse disorder, the mysterious affliction that has claimed many a hive.
The idea that we actually create many of our addictions, afflictions and ailments simply by believing in them so passionately, so religiously, almost as much, if not more, than they actually exist in the first place?
For a theodicy that emphasizes that notion, God's full purpose in creating a world that includes pain and affliction includes more than the spiritual maturation of his creatures.
