Word: finger
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...chickens. He inspects his delicately manicured lawn and the garden, one segment of which forms a floral fleur-de-lis, the symbol of French royalty. After 40 minutes, the general is back at his desk in his book-lined study. As he edits manuscripts, he extends his right index finger along the contoured body of the fountain pen to its tip. To his right is an old-fashioned inkwell from which he refills the pen, and to his left photographs of his grandchildren. There is always a vase of fresh flowers on the desk...
Whimsy is unavoidable. A dotty baronet has received a consignment of cut-rate statues from his alcoholic twin brother. The stone gods and goddesses include, naturally, Venus. A ring slipped on Venus' finger by a nervous bridegroom brings her to life, and love is reborn in a cold climate. The cast of characters, Burgess has explained, is drawn fondly from stock theatrical figures: "The boneheaded gold-hearted country squire in plus fours, the pert and resourceful servant, the grim but reliable chatelaine, the sweet guileless young lovers, the comic Anglican clergyman." Only a writer who can bring such scarecrows...
...Anderson Tape's is a standard "big caper" thriller (Topkapi, Rififi) in which a hungry hood just sprung from Sing Sing decides to strip a whole luxury Manhattan apartment house over a Labor Day weekend. He assembles a team of specialists to cut the alarm wires, finger the Klees and terrify any stray remaining tenants. The gimmick is that all the conspirators' haunts are bugged by various government agencies. Though it means that everything from a candy-store pay phone to Central Park itself has to be tapped, almost the whole novel consists of tape-recorded conversations instantly...
...charged with making. "We have clenched the fist with mass resistance," he said, "and we can only open it in two ways; we can open-it in brotherhood if the system has the capability of responding to immediate human needs, or we can open it to curl the index finger around a trigger guard...
Minnie's Boys does not present the birth of stars, merely the birth pangs of stars. It is a little like watching a boy finger-painting and then brushing a few crude daubs on a canvas, after which these scenes are assembled in a show called Mama da Vinci's Boy Leon. Few people are likely to want to see the ordeal of apprenticeship onstage, the step-by-step trial of talent, and the stumble-by-stumble inevitability of error. In Minnie's Boys that is pretty much what the audience is condemned to observe. Only once...