Word: connoisseuring
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Readers of Evan Connell's The Connoisseur already know Karl Muhlbach, the middle-aged insurance executive and widower who developed a quiet obsession with pre-Columbian art. An innately cool eye for authenticity got him started. Muhlbach's sudden desire to possess statuary caused him embarrassment. In Double Honeymoon, Muhlbach again decides to take a risk within limits. This time it is a brief fling with a beautiful young girl every bit as exotic and cracked as a piece of pre-Columbian pottery...
...Australian-born author has published more than a dozen books of fiction that have slowly earned her a reputation as one of the world's most skillful writers. Stead is a connoisseur of the seven deadly sins. She possesses a special genius for decorating the interior of a character's mind, no matter how pinched by wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy or greed. Her masterpiece is The Man Who Loved Children (1940), the story of the unhappiest family dwelling in literature since the House of Atreus...
...also the bemused, sardonic connoisseur of everything that suits his appetite. A gourmet when it comes to pheasant, a gourmand when it comes to tamales, a consumer of fine wines and Santa Ines rum, he can deliver laughably erudite and baroque speeches or lead Indian troops on a jungle campaign. His middleman position allows him to see Europe in the light of America, and America in the light of Europe. From the first page, when he looks out his window at the Arc d 'Triomphe and thinks of the volcano that overlooks his own capital, he continually sees affinities...
...contrast, the Olympic crew seem like wholly admirable free spirits - and the match is not a fair one. Joe Santo is a connoisseur of cut glass, an accomplished fiddle player and something of an out-of-pocket philosopher. "I don't believe in getting too comfortable," he tells Craig. "Stay hungry...
...facile. The portrait of Giovanni Leone (whom the author envisions as still president of the Italy of 1980 in which the coup occurs) is condescending but sympathetic. The bite of the satire is playful; Leone is irritated by the noise of electric guitars because he "was himself . . . a great connoisseur of Neapolitan songs." Reactionary forms of music, Neapolitan songs have all the melodrama "Italy" suggests...