Word: high-strung
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Such follow-the-dots criticism invites rude noises. Glendinning is on safer ground when she ignores her own theories and simply tells the story of Elizabeth Bowen's life. It is a fascinating tale. Elizabeth's parents were perfectly matched in their weaknesses: dreamy, high-strung people for whom life proved to be too much. Her father had a nervous breakdown in 1905, and her mother died in 1912. Faced with all this, Elizabeth developed a strategy of "not noticing" and emerged into gawky adolescence with big hands, big feet, a stammer and pronounced nearsightedness. She married Alan...
...rest of her life. Archibald Christie, a chilly, willful man, remarried anyway. Agatha spent the next years mostly out of England, traveling in remote parts of the Middle East until she found a kinder husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. She began to create a series of lonely, high-strung heroines, and soon fashioned a sleuth, Jane Marple, whose method of detection is based on solid premises: appearances are misleading and to trust is to be deceived...
...know how to get it. He was awkward with women--most of the time he did not know what to say. But whenever he decided it was time to speak and make himself noticed, he always blurted out some inane remark that set women on edge. His high-strung nature made him good at whipping through economics problem sets, but his inability to have a simple good time with people did not endear him to many. His laughter was forced and his jumpiness scared people off. He was especially self-concious around women, so he was even more jumpy around...
Andrew Tobias, too, sees his present success in just being able to relax a bit. Not long ago he was "a very ambitious, aggressive, high-strung Harvard graduate," a former president of Harvard Student Agencies and a co-founder of a company that was expanding like a supernova. Before Tobias could blink, he had $400,000 worth of stock options. And when the bubble inevitably burst, reducing his paper holdings to nothing, he was standing back, watching the whole thing from a healthy distance, slightly cynical and slightly wise. Naturally, he wrote a book about...
Judy Collins and Livingston Taylor. Liv is higher-pitched than his brother, though fortunately not as high-strung. He can be seen frequently at the People's Bank--Coolidge--standing in line like one of the, um, people, although a discreet peek at the blue paper in his skinny hand reveals that he may be closer to the corpulent and feline species. Anyway, he banks there, and his concerts are really pleasant--he's charming, sings funny songs, and has a good amateurish style. And his feel for the North Carolina whence the Taylors come (oh, alright, Chapel Hill...