As mystery writing has grown more determinedly realistic, reflecting social ills that lend their stories a dimension of tragedy, the old-fashioned repeating, unchanging detective has grown obsolete.
The colonel put them there; and why he did furnishes the book's mystery and its means of turning a comic grotesque into a figure with a dimension of tragedy and compassion, and all the more grotesque because of it.
Or is it just a hair scrunchie?" he asks Rosamond — rather than reaching the dimension of tragedy, which is the light in which Eliot saw his struggle and his renunciation.
But, for me, the standout, whose spirit gave the musical a new dimension of tragedy, was the charismatic Josefina Scaglione, a sweet-faced, twenty-one-year-old Argentinean who brought a depth of passion, playfulness, and womanliness to Maria.
In the meantime, communities can address other dimensions of the tragedy, including the fears they produce in children and the anxieties they stir up in adults.
The lessons of Katrina and those of the financial collapse that now commands our attention seem remarkably similar: warnings went unheeded, hubris obscured the dimensions of a tragedy, and an effective response came too late.
Soon after an overnight flood destroyed the town of nearly 60,000 people in southern Russia on July 7, killing 172 by official count, perhaps many more, President Vladimir V. Putin predictably sought to play it down: "One should not exaggerate the dimensions of the tragedy," he decreed.
So as we commemorate 9/11, we should also remember that this is also the 10th anniversary of 9/12 -- the day when the shock began to wear off, the full dimensions of the tragedy began to become clear, and the country began to decide what its reaction was going to be.
"Tibetan Self-Immolations as China Tightens Grip" (front page, March 23) vividly illustrates the human dimension of this tragedy.
