Word: eggheads
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perhaps its most remarkable attainment is that the premise and structure, which sound inordinately egghead when described, are easy to grasp in performance. The action begins with the detective (James Naughton), a rumpled knight of the tenderloin who lives by a code of honor in a world of thugs and well-heeled thieves. Moments later the story shifts to the office (coyly labeled a "cell") where his creator labors as a hireling of a movie tycoon more crass, smug and fascinatingly awful than any envisioned by Nathanael West. As the tycoon (Rene Auberjonois) lays down the law (no social criticism...
Giamatti knows that his eight years as head of one of the nation's great universities will affect how he is perceived now and for the rest of his career. He is permanently stamped as the egghead who invaded baseball. "I'm not ashamed of what I did at Yale," he says. "I love the place, I was extremely happy there, and I was thrilled to have some control over its continuing excellence and well-being." Still, if stories about him must be written, he would like to see a few that do not harp on his exotic past, drop...
This is the sort of guff one can hear on The Morton Downey Jr. Show, yet it is one of the perverse pleasures of reading Fussell that he can play the loudmouth and the egghead with equal relish. One of his models is George Orwell, who hid his social pedigree and erudition behind a blunt style that shook comfortable perceptions with irony and contradictions. When Fussell goes to the races at the Indianapolis Speedway, for example, he begins with the standard derisive sociology about the "middles" in the reserved seats and the black-leather set that gathers in the muddy...
...truism of presidential politics that unless the nation is at war or a candidate is courting the egghead vote, stressing foreign policy is not the road to the White House. But 1988, at first blush, may be an exception. Perhaps it is because this is the one arena where the candidates are not frightened of Reagan's shadow. The voters seem interested as well, peppering the candidates with detailed questions on everything from glasnost to the gulf...
Parker allows Spenser full awareness of these conundrums without turning the man of action into an egghead, and brings off the baroque and potentially murky tale with characteristic clarity, humor and excitement...