Word: idiom
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...underlying seriousness, Mittee is written in a light, humorous style. Telling the story in sprightly native idiom, Selina succumbs to digressions almost as often as to Boss Paul. Periodically, the novel stops to paint a tapestry of South African customs and manners, e.g., the rousing celebration of Dingaan's Day, a Boer national holiday, a bit of rural horseplay in which a gullible farmer eats lizard's eggs thinking they are stomach pills. Selina's voice bobs through the story, alternately playful and plaintive, but finally conveying the pain and humiliation for which she can never find...
...beauty of the collection, says Karolik, is that "it expresses its own idiom, which is definitely American." The two pictures on the opposite page are clearly in that idiom. William Sharp's Railroad Jubilee on Boston Common, painted an even century ago, celebrates with Fourth of July fervor the westward march of the railroad empire builders. James Goodwyn Clonney's wooden Sleigh Ride has New England winter clarity and fireside warmth...
Verneuil is not at home in the American idiom. Miss Rogers' speeches are punctuated with bits such as "How can I say it . . ." and the conversation frequently falls down under his attempt at phrase-making. He writes a light line with a heavy hand; consequently something must give...
...spoke for his program in Washington, De Lattre was impressive and persuasive. He speaks a fluent, heavily accented English, in words that sometimes trip over an English idiom. (Once, meaning to say "I point upward." he came out with, "I point my finger through the ceiling...
...mock-solemn humor of Carroll's perversely logical nonsense is all but lost in a jazzed-up jangle of gags, violence, slapstick and sticky jukebox ballads. Only rarely, e.g., the scene where Alice (spoken by Kathy Beaumont) meets the hookah-smoking caterpillar (Richard Haydn), does the Disney idiom enrich the fun instead of slanting it down to the comic-strip level...