Word: fluff
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Finally, no sampling of cookbooks would be complete without one of the genre's inevitable celebrity offerings. A typically vacuous entry this season is The Jill St. John Cookbook (Random House; 259 pages; $19.95), a bit of fluff that begins with the actress's expression of gratitude to Eastman Kodak for providing film and processing. "Thanks, Kodak!" she says, and well she might, for the collection of glistening photographs, mostly of the monthly food columnist herself, are this volume's main, albeit limited, attraction...
...didn't oversleep. The actual Academy Awards won't be presented until April. You have a full five months to prepare for the cavalcade of fluff pieces, infotainment specials, and the interminable Oscar ceremony itself...
...comedy become so glum loving? Part of it can be attributed to the medium's cyclical swings. When the provocative Norman Lear comedies of the early '70s went out of fashion, sitcoms retreated to escapist fluff; now realism and relevance are coming back into vogue. The networks, moreover, are fond of high-profile, easily promotable episodes that can draw attention to a series. ("Next week on I Love Valerie: a crack dealer moves into the neighborhood.") Equally important, many writers and producers, tired of feeding the sitcom gag machine, are looking for ways to stretch the old formulas. Says Hugh...
...least until now. Temporary Shelter presents 20 tales, a number of which have previously appeared in publications ranging from the highbrow (Antaeus, Granta) to the mass market (Redbook, Mademoiselle). The quality is uneven, the good mixed with occasional bits of fluff. No single story in this collection seems automatically destined for anthologies. Yet the book as a whole is a good deal more powerful and absorbing than any of its individual parts...
...want to couch that hard kernel of acid truth with pastry fluff. Once that poison is injested, maybe that will open new avenues of thought," he said...