Word: detail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deep perception of the playwright or his plays: it focuses instead on a tedious hunt for the minutiae of names, addresses and trivial incidents that made their way from Williams' life into his art. Spoto's writing lacks lilt, and his themes often bog down in a glut of detail. The book's most conspicuous shortcoming is an absence of the engaging Williams voice and personality as they emerged in his chatty, scurrilous Memoirs (1975). Spoto, who did not know his subject personally, captures neither the man's whimsy nor his power to entertain, views his perversities with apparent distaste...
...Christian Association. Before returning to the U.S. in 1925, when John was eleven, the couple preached a social gospel that emphasized literacy and reform. It was a monumental labor complicated by floods, famines and warlords. Hersey provides the necessary historical overviews, but it is the abundance of detail that reawakens the sorrows of Old China. A short list of levies: "pig-rearing tax, firecracker tax, opium-smoking lamp tax, marrying off one's daughter tax, narcissus bulb tax, superstition tax, lower-class prostitute singing tax, and, terrible thought, night-soil tax, so that one couldn't even defecate without paying...
...Alice Adams, A Place in the Sun and Giant, he displayed an affinity for ambitious outsiders with their noses pressed against the frosted window of the American dream. Maddeningly meticulous, he could earn a laugh by simply waiting out the punch line; but his obsession with visual detail finally led him down narrative blind alleys. By the end he was making not great movies but pretty pictures. In that failing he was hardly unique...
...couple of these fictitious sons of Harvard--the token preppie's last name has necessitated a disclaimer in the "Publisher's Note" actually take less than, predictable paths, but not before a detour through a detail and cliche-loaded section about 1954-58. The details are sure to cause reminiscing in Harvard Clubs nationwide, if not in dorm rooms...
...killing a Greek arms dealer, helping, he Iraqi army blow up Iranian shipping, and carrying out missions to stop the shelling of the Marines in Lebanon are plausible, someone in such a dangerous business would not say so specifically exactly what he did and to whom. The kind of detail in this book makes it unbelievable. Anyone could track down and kill the author if the details were anywhere near true. The author is probably a part-time librarian who reads newspaper clippings and James Bond novels and lets his imagination do all the rest...