And people could see him trying to figure out a complex relationship between men and society through the construction of a cultural memory that is shared by the Chinese people of particular historical periods. (pacegallery.com)
Similarly, a person whose objective is to acquire a sense for a particular historical period and a person whose objective is to savor a skilled writer's use of the mother tongue will have to bring somewhat different sets of abilities to a historical novel; they will have different understandings of the same novel. (religion-online.org)
The phrase «Inherent Vice» refers to «the tendency in physical objects to deteriorate because of the fundamental instability of the components of which they are made, as opposed to deterioration caused by external forces» — a mouthful that refers simultaneously to the characters, their city, their nation, and the particular historical period that has defined all of it, and that is already passing into memory when «Inherent Vice» begins. (rogerebert.com)