Word: phrasings
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...little harsh, of course. The Times' survey comes with a lengthy, elegant essay couching the whole project in a comfy coccoon of critical nuance, pre-emptively name-checking "the deplorable modern mania for ranking, list-making and fabricated competition" before vigorously succumbing to it. (It also includes the regrettable phrase "in the age of James Frey." Moratorium? Who's with me?) It's not the least of its sins, but it has to be said that the Times list is aggressively boring. I was surprised and pleased - like running into a dear friend at a deadly dull cocktail party...
...funny thing. “Some days, that’s what happens” is a simple, mundane line, arguably the linguistic equivalent to “He’s just not that into you.” It takes some time to accept, but the phrase reflects resignation to something final and inflexible...
...editors: I am writing to refute the arguments of Charles Drummond (“Girl Interrupted,” comment, April 26). Kaavya Viswanathan, in her debut novel, has not taken “few plot points and a borrowed phrase every 10 pages,” but something much more egregious than that. She has taken the plot, prose, and language from another novel and with no reinvention whatsoever tried to pass them off as her own. Yes, I acknowledge that we live in a super-competitive age, but there are limits to everything. Let?...
...Thursday morning is “lovely,” as well as Jack Megan, the director of the Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA). So is poet and Professor of English and American Literature and Languages Peter Sacks, who briefly interrupts our interview. Such a gentle staple phrase might be thought of as at odds with a young woman who has played such a forceful role in dramatic arts on campus. Savitsky has been involved in 16 productions, is the historian of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, and serves as the executive producer...
...moved in me, how that cadence undid in a minute’s time whatever prior cadences had been voice-tracking my life?” The critic answers “No...he can’t.” He continues by attacking Birkerts’s phrase “the moment of Shakespearean ripeness,” which Marcus alleges is Birkerts’ crass plot to remind his readers that “he knows Shakespeare.” A current student of Birkerts’s—who prefers to remain anonymous?...