Word: gimmicks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mechanics and mystique of baseball. To say merely that the books are about sports, however, is to tell the plot without describing its climax. They are really about people-and the fantasies, triumphs and humiliations of George Plimpton. ∙ The Plimpton method began simply enough as a journalistic gimmick, a conscious attempt to release the Walter Mitty in one man and, perhaps, in every man. If an amateur athlete could take the place of a professional and then write about it, he reasoned, every fan in the country would identify with him and want to read his story. A good...
...ever won, the mystery of craft would vanish altogether. Still he must try. "I know that when I do these things," he says, "I hope desperately that I'll succeed at them." In fact, the Plimpton method is somewhat more than a reporter's gimmick. The product of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard and Cambridge, not to mention three centuries of New England ancestors, he always felt deprived of at least one thing. "I was never able to consider seriously doing what I could do quite well, which was to throw a ball," Plimpton says, somewhat wistfully...
...duffer who, despite the trick club, still managed to send off his shots with a spin, Pedrick dreamed up another gimmick: a golf ball with "wings." The wings, actually six tiny metal flaps, would be held tightly against the ball's outer surface by magnets implanted beneath them. But if the ball began spinning, the flaps would be flipped out by centrifugal force and act as an air brake, retarding the spin...
...gimmick is good enough. Alas, the characters are solid pine and the plot is upholstered with historical minutiae that quickly become tedious. Moreover, the book is illustrated with old photographs, prints and sketches supposedly drawn by the hero. Altogether a painfully literal effort, except for those who take joy in minute historical coincidence. Like the fact that New York had a ball team way back then called the Metropolitans. But those Mets had pitching problems...
...ringidentification gimmick, so skillfully handled in Twelfth Night, is here even more awkwardly managed than in The Merchant of Venice. And interlarded along the way is another story involving the vile coward Parolles-a plot that has no organic connection, with the main tale...