Word: adeptly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rather surprisingly, Bellow also proves himself adept at political analysis and brisk invective. His view of the U.S. Secretary of State is swiftly conveyed: "Kissinger was deep in conversation with Danny Kaye . . . One of Kissinger's assistants earnestly said, 'That is an old relationship and a very meaningful one.' " His perceptive summa tions of Islamic tradition or Zionist his tory are comparable to the great riffs and turbulences of his novels. But the Middle East, no matter how bizarre, is not fictive, and in the end its complex ity forces Bellow to quote the urgent pas sage...
...this was pretty good fun, at least for a while, in Nicholas Meyer's bestseller, an affectionate if not exactly orthodox salute to Conan Doyle. High spirits and some adept literary parody helped carry along a rather shaky narrative. In the screenplay, however, Meyer is at the mercy of his own dialogue, which sounds too arch, and the same structural problem that hobbled his book...
...Funny Lady, The Sunshine Boys) is uncertain throughout about whether to play things straight or risk a little satire. Ross made a neat if rather prissy puzzle a few years back called The Last of Sheila, but here all clues are obvious, all deductions self-evident. Ross is usually adept with actors too, but in this case, Williamson's Holmes is too wired, even for someone giving up coke, and Duvall's Watson resembles a vaudeville Englishman, all jowls and bluster. This excess is echoed in the accents of Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave (who plays the abducted actress...
Dartmouth had more than its share of problems, but Columbia proved even more adept at throwing the ball away, as the Green rolled to a 34-14 victory, despite two interceptions, two fumbles, a blocked punt and nine penalty calls...
Barrett, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of several nonfiction books, is adept at the mechanics of the novel. His dialogue sounds spoken, the scenes pass by smoothly and at just the right clip. Occasionally the prose is too lavish: "The sofas and chairs lie in cool pools of watery shadow like velvet leviathans anesthetized." But such empurplings fade as the book proceeds on its quiet but genuinely moving path. In the end, The End of the Party seems a well-tended, well-annotated photo album, an example of loving nostalgia tempered by wisdom...