Word: conversationalists
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...face of it, but Maugham has the easy knack of wringing interest out of all of them. Virtually all of his information is from other books (which he freely admits), and he says very little that is original. Yet the effect is that of a good conversationalist quietly voicing some private enthusiasms over some very good, very old brandy. His trick is to talk mostly about people and not too much about his advertised subject. The novels of Germany's Goethe make an occasion to discuss a man of genius who found it hard to keep away from...
Strings or Noose? It began with Humphrey, who has few peers as an articulate, extended conversationalist, spending more than an hour in enthusiastic explanation of a pet project: an International Health Year, comparable to the current International Geophysical Year, for expanded exchanges of information in medical research fields. Khrushchev, Humphrey said later, responded warmly...
Armed with a glass of dry sherry, Mike is an amiable conversationalist, listening politely and with a nod of his head now and then returning answers to difficult questions with the open frankness and straight-from-the-shoulder approach that has won him many friends...
When Ambrose Usher first bubbled into print, London critics hooted happily that the model for the talkative detective was obviously brilliant, pudgy Sir Isaiah Berlin, Oxford don, author (The Hedgehog and the Fox), cross-country conversationalist and, during World War II, a first secretary at the British embassy in Washington. Jocelyn Davey was a nom de plume, and there seemed good reason to suspect that Sir Isaiah might be Author Davey, as well as Hero Usher. To save a fellow Reform Club member from disrepute, the real author stepped forward: brilliant, pudgy Chaim ("Rab") Raphael, who was at Oxford with...
Real ability still often must take second place to good fellowship. The difficulty lies with the fact that there is no common agreement concerning in what merit consists. Academic standing is not always consulted, and often the glib conversationalist will be elected over the serious scholar. Many members are more concerned with keeping certain people out than with who gets in. The election meetings are charged with a snobbery and viciousness that many Final Clubs would be hard pressed to emulate...