Word: protean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Lessing, 64, author of such works as The Golden Notebook and Briefing for a Descent into Hell, is one of the most serious and protean writers in the world. Why did she stop at the height of her career to play the prankster? Her intent, as she explains in the preface to an upcoming one-volume paperback edition of the Somers novels, was partly to show how difficult it is for the work of unknown authors to attract wide attention. On a more personal level, she wanted to twit the critics who have insisted on pigeonholing her: first...
AILING. Joan Miró, 90, protean Spanish painter of playful, dreamlike canvases; gravely ill with deteriorating respiratory disease; in Palma de Mallorca...
...beyond these gleanings the authors patiently give substance and shape to the world's most protean political and cultural organism. The standardization of urban skylines, the mailing of the suburbs and monotoning of news barely begin to smooth out the stubborn differences that define each region of the country. Pennsylvanian Peirce and North Dakotan Hagstrom count eight discrete sections: Mid-Atlantic, New England, Great Lakes, Border South, Deep South, Great Plains, Mountain, and Pacific, which includes Alaska, an area so large that it embraces four time zones...
...come alive and turn a happy regard to the court." What happens when these three characters mix, along with their assorted relatives, friends and lovers, is deliberately unbelievable; in extending two stories into a sketchy novel, Hannah creates a sequel as sideshow. The true star is Hannah's protean comic prose. He can deadpan with the best of them. Says Bob Smith, explaining why he has stolen a dead friend's extensive collection of books: "I never had an education except school." Even closer to Hannah's talent is rhetorical display. A description of Levaster...
Sometimes it is possible to be too talented. Take the case of Leonard Bernstein, for example. The protean golden boy of American music, who will turn 65 in August, has justly won renown as a flamboyant conductor, an engaging proselytizer and an omnidirectional composer. Bernstein has conquered in ballet (Fancy Free), the Broadway musical (West Side Story) and the symphony (The Age of Anxiety). But in the past 20 years, it seems, the vast range of his talent has hindered rather than helped him, especially as a writer of serious music. In 1963 there was the embarrassment of the "Kaddish...