Word: conceitedly
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...other aspect of Davies' novel falls flat. In The Rebel Angels Davies populates the novel with the unseen but mysterious forces of medieval angels. But in What's Bred in the Bone Davies brings them to life. The Daimon Maimas and the Recording Angel narrate the novel. This little conceit provides the structural premise of the book, and it wilts fast...
...explain. His conceit is to posit that Maimas and the Recording Angel have guided Cornish through his life in an effort to make him great. So when Cornish's nephew calls upon them in jest, they appear (not to the nephew of course, only to the reader) to tell the tale. Why does Davies do this? Well, it's kind of clever and amusing at first. And the use of these two characters could be forgiven if they weren't used in such an amateurish way. Throughout the novel they interrupt every once in a while to explain the most...
...France, Lancelot has travelled to join Arthur's new order, the Knights of the Round Table, a chilvalrous fraternity dedicated to Arthur's new Machiavellian philosophy that might should be the weapon of right. Arthur welcomes him readily while the rest of the court initially is sickened by his conceit. This is a fine lively moment for the east and Meyers delivers some especially sharp jabs at Lancelot's lack of humility...
...role is suggested to her. Mistaken for a clerk in a stereo store, she becomes an expert on audio equipment; when police confuse her with a member of the bomb squad, she proceeds to defuse an explosive device planted in a store basement. It is the sort of loony conceit that could be sunk by heavy-handed treatment. With the delightful O'Hara and just 22 minutes to tell the story, it floats along amiably...
White could probably argue that his first insider accounts were more than good theater. But the last three elections have involved electoral forces that are so far removed from the back room as to render insider accounts almost irrelevant. It is a liberal conceit of these three accounts, especially Time's Henry's "outsider" history, that Reagan, like Nixon before him, had pulled a fast one on the public and the earnest but naive Democrats. Henry, waxing ominous, says of the President in one particularly overdone passage...