Word: prose
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This collection of assorted prose is a rather judicious picking-up of views and reviews, ruminations and commentary of all sorts, some speeches, an interview, a parody, and several miscellaneous vignettes. In contrast to the cover's jacket, which leads us to expect a kind of epistemological A to Z--everything "from Brazilian Indian legends and turkish sultans to symbiosis and suicide"--Updike's interests are literary. As is generally the case with reviews and criticism, it is not so much who or what is being reviewed that we read, but Updike himself...
...other works by his subject. Says Gray: "I came to admire Vidal for his accomplishments in an old but honorable role, the well-rounded man of letters." He adds: "Vidal does not seem to be taken seriously by most academic critics, but they could learn something about graceful, effective prose from studying his work." From Rome, Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof traveled with Vidal to his hillside villa in Ravello. "After a tour of the house and a drink of Vidal's home-bottled wine, we went out to dinner and talked until midnight," says Amfitheatrof. "By then the file...
...then the need for discretion, self-control and clear prose will be greater than ever. And if the beast can be tamed, the benefits of freer expression and the wider dissemination of information will be multiplied over and over and over and over and over...
...work has survived the age that produced it. We do not read Vile Bodies because it is a spoof of something we care about; we care about the Bright Young Things of Mayfair (if we care at all) only because of Vile Bodies and novels like it. Waugh's prose style is recognized as crystalline and authentic. His characters, born in a half-life between portrait and imagination, are fully his creations now, now that the originals have been forgotten. Those who insist on relegating Waugh to the position of a minor writer will have to be convinced...
...writers who can still use phrases like "the life of the mind" and "the sanctity of thought" without causing the eyes of his readers to glaze. His prose reflects the even heat of his intelligence, yet he can turn a seating phrase when the situation calls for it. During the '60s, when some of his academic colleagues were carried away by militant fantasies, Howe labeled them "guerrillas with tenure...