It is surprising to hear Lürssen, a wealthy CEO and heir to a century-old family business, reduce himself to the level of an obsequious servant, grateful for crumbs off the king's table.
His unique talent — being "Trump" or, as he often referred to himself, "the Trumpster," looming ubiquitous by reducing himself to a persona — exempted him from introspection.
Foreshadowing the title of Beckett's second play Endgame, the novel ends with a game of chess between Murphy and Mr Endon in which Murphy resigns and then soon after dies, setting fire to himself in his lonely room and reducing himself to dust and oblivion.
A number of his observations from the time are disturbingly resonant now: for instance, that "his unique talent — being 'Trump' or, as he often referred to himself, 'the Trumpster,' looming ubiquitous by reducing himself to a persona — exempted him from introspection".
Tommy reduces himself to offering himself to Marty sexually.
He needs to tell his own complicated individual story and stop reducing himself to the outsider/businessman advertising cliché.
Instead you get such things as the mantra-like "Say Yes," in which K-Ci slowly reduces himself to amorous rubble ("tonight, whatever you want to do, your wish is my command," etc).
To play Trevor Reznik, the skeletal insomniac who stalks through this bleak psychological thriller, this buff star of "American Psycho" reduced himself to a walking 120-pound cadaver.
But this hardly counts as a triumph for the screenwriter, who has reduced himself to nothing without any such grand stroke.
"The Scream" arose from a vision that seized him on an afternoon stroll with friends; in it he reduces himself to his inarticulate essence.
