Word: backgrounding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first chapters of the book, however, defeat her. She overwrites, trying to dramatize essentially unexciting background information. We find ourselves mired in such phrases as "that she could embrace his flaws was in the fabric of her passion." A best friend of Jean Harris's, elsewhere sympathetically portrayed, has this stereotype forced upon her. "Ever after, she used the same phrase...'Instant take!' she would exult, tossing back her handsome white-blond head and whinnying like the very expensive palomino pony she much resembles." Alexander's efforts to push this initial descriptive segment of the book to artistic heights falls...
...strain of fleshing out her background information begins to show with such chatter as "As soon as she knew it was too late to call the hostess, her [Harris's] thoughts seemed to slip into a new gear, a sort of emotional overdrive, electraglide, pantransoverride. "Luckily the next lines give us a clue as to Harris's real state of mind: "She listened to the slap-slap of the windshield wipers and though about nothing whatsoever...
PORTRAYING the familial background of her characters also forces Alexander to generalize in cliches, giving her some difficulty. Detail is her forte; generalizations do not always survive mass cliches. The author gives excellent treatment to Tarnower's complex anti-Semitism. Alexander grounds her conclusions in a wealth of quotations. But attributing Harris's tragic end to the emotional frustration of "ladies of a particular northern upper-class WASP variety" becomes a kind of shorthand which hinders us from understanding Jean Harris's personality...
...practitioner of a style of broadcast journalism that treats news like sports, emphasizing vivid snippets of videotaped reality rather than a reporter's measured conclusions. Indeed, some critics claim that Donaldson is scarcely a reporter. He makes little effort to compete with print journalists in developing sources and background knowledge, or uncovering major news. As he sees it, his job is to get people, especially the President, to react on the record, on camera. Says he: "My specialty is asking a pointed question to draw the newsworthy response that everyone else uses...
...persuade the uncommitted. Tuesday, Joyce set up shop in Springfield. On Friday, the day before the vote, the campaign flew in Glenn's "Ohio Mafia," a group of 10 Ohioans who would accompany the regional coordinators on the floor to answer questions about the senator's background and to add credence to the campaign. "Using elected officials to campaign for you is a page out of JFK's book. The delegates like that. I'm from Glenn's home state...they feel I am really a representative of the senator,' said Rep Dennis E. Eckart (D-Ohio...