Word: detail
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...professional rivalry--he demolishes him by adding a further dimension of newsreels. Weaving together the large-than-life dramas of actual newsreels with the mundane existence of Maguire and his fictional associates, Noyce creates a rich and engaging tapestry, but the thread of plot is often obscured by detail...
...first hour is merely one long pop corn break. An idealistic doctor (Robert Foxworth) and his pregnant wife (Talia Shire) move to the Maine woods. Once there they learn, in woefully elaborate detail, that a local paper mill is polluting the streams and driving Indians from their land. In the second hour, the couple belatedly discover that the mill's waste materials have contributed to the growth of a mutant monster that stalks the forest. The creature, which looks like Smokey the Bear with an advanced acne condition, then proceeds to rear its ugly head in a few dimly...
...White Album is Didion's latest collection of these images--20 essays written from 1968 to 1978. It is a brilliant albeit occasionally disjointed collage of impressions, written with her customary journalistic eye for detail and infused with emotion. The essays discuss the '60s, portray Didion and others, and sketch California life with wit and deadly accuracy...
PERHAPS IT IS this hesitancy to generalize, to offer weighty and solemn judgments, that makes Didion's writing so evocative. Instead of pronouncements, she offers reportage. She focuses on an incident and notes every detail in uncluttered, harsh prose. Didion also has the reporter's curiosity about how things work. She investigates how orchids are tended, how freeways are monitored, how lifeguards live, how dams work, the philosophy and history of shopping malls. She is always honest in her examination of a setting or person. She damns through accuracy, not forceful moral argument. In "Bureaucrats," for example, she perfectly captures...
DIDION'S SENSITIVITY--the very quality that powers her writing--defeats her in the end. She is mired in an emotional bog; the weight of her evocative detail does not allow her to stand back and assess the images she conjures. The White Album's collection of little insights does not add up to one big one. Didion writes about an intensely debated, copiously documented period, but she doesn't try to impose any order on the chaos. Didion cannot ultimately discipline her own sensitivity, and therein lies the failure of this tightly written, perceptive book...