Word: antic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...writ large. RCA has just released four compilations of Presley material with scrupulous "audio restoration": The Top Ten Hits, The Number One Hits and, most crucially, The Complete Sun Sessions, recorded at the start of his career, and The Memphis Record, recorded in 1969, when all the anger and antic experimentation of rock seemed to have left Elvis in the lurch. The 23 songs on The Memphis Record (never released all together until now) were originally conceived as a reassertion of Presley's primacy. In 1987 they sound like a premature last testament. The Memphis Record, as it turns...
Elsewhere, Amis turns metaphysics into antic prose. A pathetically humorous character known as the Immortal has been and will be around forever ("If time is money, then I am the last of the big spenders") and has seen it all ("I had to hold my horses for quite a while before there were any human beings to hang out with . . . I sat through geology, waiting for biology"). History provides a brief interlude to the Immortal's loneliness, and he pleads with 20th century mortals, "Be careful -- you'll hurt yourselves. Please. Please try and stay a little longer...
...That may be because his books and reputation can appear so intimidating. When a serious, renowned writer tosses out big ideas, the proper response seems to be a hushed, respectful concentration. But at least as far back as Herzog (1964), Bellow began putting the act of thinking through some antic paces. Moses Herzog was the first, but not the last, of the author's heroes to suffer the risible torments of the hypereducated man. Notable among these is the discovery that life in 20th century America has a few tricks up | its sleeve that are not covered by the grand...
...Zandt, after all, did spend a formative and formidable nine years as Miami Steve, the driving force and antic soul man of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. His guitar was the band's bedrock, and his harmonies with Springsteen were communions of friendship with the audience and with Bruce. He was at Springsteen's side during the first days of major glory in the mid-' 70s, when stardom broke so heavily, and he was there for the years of uncertainty and renewed triumph that followed. Van Zandt did some outside record producing during that time too, calling himself Sugar...
...clean, antic style of the Warner Bros. cartoons lives in the pages of William the Backwards Skunk (Crown; $10.95). And why not? The artist-author is Chuck Jones, 74, director of so many Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Road Runner animated shorts that even he has lost count. Jones has no trouble recalling the number of books he has produced: this is his first. The star is a highly odiferous creature who wears his white stripe in front, where no enemy can see it. In the forest, confusion reigns supreme. The panthers, foxes and bears are afraid to hunt; without...