Word: portraited
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...Because there was once a person inside each of the shells, they have the slightly eerie factuality of a petrified tree, a fossil or (as has often been said) that great tourist attraction of Southern Italy, the plaster molds of dead Pompeians. Now and again, Segal made an identifiable portrait; the show includes the effigies of those New York Pompeians of the '60s, the collectors Robert and Ethel Scull, she complete with sunglasses and Courrèges boots. But as a rule, Segal's figures are not identifiable. They are generalized, spectral presences, muffled in the folds...
...feats, including his water-can escape, were authentically and grippingly duplicated by Mark Mazzarella, a 19-year-old college sophomore. But the cost of going for such theatrical pizazz was a loss of psychological depth. Houdini offered almost no plot, almost no human interplay. Throughout the evening, a large portrait of the magician stared out at the performers from the ear of the stage, as if challenging them to account for his mysterious driven nature. The tricks, the career, the public appropriation of him as a hero were all here. But the man himself? Once again, he escaped. - Christopher Porterfield
...biting scenes (given fine clarity by Arthur Jacobs' translation). The mysterious Lulu is a dancer, an amoral enchantress, perhaps a force of nature. She first rises through society, then falls disastrously, as lovers contend for her elusive soul and all too accessible body. Throughout the opera, a large portrait of her hangs onstage-one of Berg's many specifications that were sometimes ignored in the past...
Charles Dickens drew Mr. Micawber straight from the outlines of his own bumbling, eternally optimistic father. When James Joyce created Simon Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, he took a cold look at his da and virtually transcribed the old man's boozy conversation. Examples proliferate, but the point is clear: lucky the writer who is blessed with a vivid parent. The childhood may have been hellish, but the material supplied by domestic drama can be invaluable. In the endless quest for characters that is a writer's lot, there...
...mystery-as does Hone's reason for calling this a "literary biography," since it fails to analyze the books or the career. Instead, he splices together bits of Sayers' life and pieces of her work so that the whole resembles an unfinished puzzle rather than a portrait...