Word: mirthfulness
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...letters offer a look at the private pains of a publicly triumphant life. Born during the Civil War, Wharton flourished until almost the beginning of World War II. She inherited considerable wealth and earned a great deal in addition by her writing; such novels as The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence were critical and commercial successes. She became so formidable a literary icon during the 1920s that F. Scott Fitzgerald, invited to meet her, drank more than was advisable to steady himself before his audience with the great lady...
...Rohatyn, the head of Lazard Freres and among those most commonly mentioned for Treasury Secretary, as touting Republican Robinson for that job in a Dukakis Administration. Score one for Rohatyn. It then quoted Robinson as saying he has no desire for a Cabinet post. "There was a lot of mirth in the office over that one," a Wall Street colleague recalls...
...leader of Israel's association of secular humanists. But the diminutive, soft-spoken Steinsaltz inspires superlatives from all Jewish factions. In recognition of his achievements, he has just been named winner of the 1988 Israel Prize, his nation's highest honor. The rabbi greeted the news with characteristic mirth: "Gee, one gets that a year before one dies...
...fronting the Police Academy farces. The story -- of three roguish bachelors forced to care for an abandoned infant -- cradled few surprises and, for great barren stretches, got lost in a draggy drug plot. The film's direction had all the comic subtlety one would expect from that Merlin of mirth, Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy. Maybe the producers thought he was Doctor Spock...
Dorothy Herrmann's recent biography, S.J. Perelman: A Life, points out what any sensible reader already knows: humorists are not a sunny breed. They pick up their tribulations by the wrong end, and that provokes mirth. But after the audience leaves, the anguish remains. Perelman's boon companion and brother- in-law, Novelist Nathanael West (Miss Lonelyhearts), died young (36) in a car crash. Perelman never fully recovered from the blow, nor did his wife Laura, who descended into alcoholism. Many of his best letters deal obliquely with the disappointments he felt with his family and his work...