Word: portraited
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Because, careening along in Goldman's "world view," if you will there just isn't time for perspective. Histories of failed projects, cruddy judgements and outright lunacy paint a decidedly one-sided portrait. As the first one in on a project, the writer inevitably feels the dilution of his own vision each step of the way. Adventures's off-the-tongue-and-into-the-tape recorder style attracts and nauseates at the same time, especially when Goldman gets self-effacing about his early years, or misty-eyed about being haunted by his own limitations, or arriving at universal "human truths...
...White Hotel was seen as a breakthrough novel partly because of its portrait of one of the most honest and complicated female characters in recent fiction. In Ararat, by contrast, the reader has to contend with many different voices, a new one at each level of storytelling. Furthermore, these voices are generally those of unpleasant men or stereotypical, one-dimensional women Cleopatra, it turns out, is the most complicated female character in the entire work...
...contrived redemption. Too many sob stories, too much booze, and too many trite lines about guilt and the meaning of life at the wrong time make the novel seem more like a sappy tear-jerker than a poignant analysis of a tormented woman. Unfortunately, the portrait of Susan is less vivid. While the majority of the novel is devoted to supposed introspection on Susan's part, most of the lines provide little insight into Susan herself. How Susan's problems with men, for example, relate to her parents' past never becomes clear. As a result, the novel appears more like...
Robert Dole, 59, Republican Senator from Kansas, on Democratic Presidential Aspirant John Glenn: "I told John it wasn't fair for him to take advantage of his hero status as an astronaut. I mentioned this at the unveiling of the portrait showing me invading Italy...
There are soap-operatic calamities in this extended family, complete with a widowed aunt (Joyce Van Patten), her restless older daughter (Jodi Thelen) and her coddled, sickly younger one (Mandy Ingber). But they are redeemed by Simon's abiding affection. In a character portrait in depth, Željko Ivanek, as Eugene's older brother, provides his panting sibling with a silver lining: not a Yankees uniform but a French postcard. This season's silver lining is Neil Simon's love letter to his past...