Word: conceits
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...Jorge Volpi’s “Season of Ash,” translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam, does indeed offer a unique scientific analysis of human behavior and a character list ample enough to facilitate countless love stories. But while Volpi’s literary conceit is ambitious enough, and his ideas occasionally intriguing, his hackneyed prose and contrived analysis diminish his message. Volpi’s account of the shocking socio-political events of the late 20th century percolates through the narrative of Yuri Chernishevsky, whose enigmatic past is gradually unmasked, revealing uncanny links...
...Likening steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to the exotic derivatives and over-leveraging of the 1990s and 2000s may be a too convenient conceit. Nevertheless, there are startling similarities that once again reaffirm baseball’s unique position in American society as a pitch-perfect mimic of the economic and political climate...
...blinded. Then, within that fantasy, the father writes a novel reviving his child. It's a little more appealing as a Charlie Kaufman-like structure than as a movie; but Lau, for two decades the prime mopey presence in Hong Kong films, brings gravity and grace to the conceit...
...more fun than I expected, and loads better than the sequel. I even became almost fond of Bumblebee, the Autobot/Camaro who functions as Sam's pet and protector, even as the premise of vehicles morphing into robots continued to seem preposterous to me. But I had to admit, the conceit was also undeniably impressive in its attentiveness to the interests of small males. Some of the Decepticons even look like dinosaurs, which borders on pandering to 5-year-olds. If Hasbro could engineer such an adaptable delight, why not a toy for girls that is both an Easy-Bake oven...
...idea that a President can be assessed in a mere 100 days is a journalistic conceit. Most presidencies evolve too slowly to be judged so quickly. Roosevelt set the initial standard in 1933, overpowering Congress and passing a slew of legislation to confront the Great Depression during his first three months in office. "Lyndon Johnson had two 100-days periods," says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, "one after the Kennedy assassination and another after he was elected in 1964." Indeed, Johnson's legislative haul dwarfs anything before or since; he quickly got Congress on track to pass landmark civil rights bills...