Word: goatishly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rocking sheep" covered in natural fleece. Wolfing down golf-ball-size chunks of fresh lamb barbecue (at $3.50 a plate), they watch as skilled artisans turn piles of fleece into yarn with Rumpelstiltskin-like skill. After hours spent looking over the thickset Dorsets and Suffolks, fine-haired Merinos, goatish Barbado black bellies and exotic Karakuls on display, people whose only past experience with sheep also involved mint jelly begin to make knowing comments about various breeds...
Various clues-the single mistress, the lack of names and characterization, the fact that each of the four artists withers or dies after reaching renown-suggest what the author is up to. Goatish carnality is occasionally his medium, but he is writing about the mysterious web of past-present, the great arcs of possibility that bemuse a boy and, broken, haunt a man. His six characters are the mislaid and scattered pieces of one, the teacher who dreamed of painting, wrote a little, had a talent for music...