Word: compressional
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In his collaborations with George, and with a host of other composers including Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke, Ira could write lyrics that appeared clumsy or cliched; he could skip or cram syllables into a melodic line. But no lyricist used slang phrases earlier or as...
The Japanese, who see their world in terms of duties and obligations, have learned to do so because they have always had to live with constraint. If you live on an island (to paraphrase an English poet who did) you cannot be one. The Japanese have evolved a whole system...
In Solitude, for example, the fictional village of Macondo, founded by the Buendia family, starts as a green Eden, then falls victim to collective amnesia, a Yanqui fruit company, catastrophic rains and inexplicable bouts of incest before being reclaimed by the jungle. When the beautiful and maddeningly virtuous Remedies Buendia...
Yet eggnog is not without its spice or season. Lehrer's best lyrics are feats of compression; works like Masochism Tango ("You can raise welts like nobody else") or When You Are Old and Gray ("Say you'll love and trust me/ For I know you'll...
Labels are a handy and necessary form of compression. How else does a reader remember whether it is Ethiopia or Somalia that is under Soviet and Cuban domination? But labels can mislead. In his new autobiographical Ways of Escape, Graham Greene writes: "I had an idea before I went to...