Word: couchant
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...Francisco rep company didn't succeed in the early '80s, when they nicknamed her for a dim-witted novelty-store joke. "I was very flatulent," she explains with an angelic smile. "So for a while it was 'Whoopi Cushion.' Then, for a touch of class, 'Whoopi Couchant.' So I thought, Why not? I'll be Whoopi. But Whoopi Johnson just doesn't cut it." (You figure that one out; her name then was Caryn Johnson.) So she rummaged among her family names and came up with some mixed-blood Goldbergs she swears are back tsn't break character...
...American publisher came up with a blithe title like Salad Days (the French title is Le Chien Couchant] for this predictable little morality tale is hard to figure out. Sagan is writing against her strength. She seems to have little access to these pinched minds, so that her customary grace notes-sly humor, sheer oddity-are rarely struck. But the story is told in sure-handed fashion, and it is flawlessly paced. Gueret at least is a convincing character, and the author takes an unexpectedly hearty interest in his clumsy pursuit of Mme. Biron. The French critics are doubtless right...
Criticism of her fiction stepped up after 1972, when Sagan reportedly began battling spells of illness, and her novels grew skimpier and more vulnerable to attack. In 1981 she was devastated when a French court banned her twelfth novel, a 178-page crime story called Le Chien Couchant (The Setter), on the ground that it was an "illicit reproduction" of a short story by another writer. The ban was later reversed on appeal...
...12th century. It is no use. Even introductory definitions flutter toward mystification ("Fountain. A roundel barry wavy argent and azure"). Fortunately, the book's 1,700 illustrations fill this simple information gap with a tournament of griffins rampant and bends sinister. They may be best perused couchant (lying down but with head erect...
...nibble on-in the kitchen of the Peking Hotel, an immaculate, white-tiled temple of taste employing 115 cooks and helpers. Sniffing and sampling as she went, she paused over the array of delicacies-goldfish in white sauce, egg rolls rampant on a field of seaweed, steamed baby bird couchant on clamshell pastry-and with the judicious eye of a diner selecting one from Column A and one from Column B. In the vegetable carving room, where chefs sculpted 6-ft. radishes, turnips, carrots and sugar beets into decorative flowers, she picked up a radish carnation, placed...