Word: proteans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...Coppola, however, is generous with his fine young actors (excepting Dillon, whose coltish charm is fast becoming a festival of Method mannerisms). It is easy to sense Coppola's identification with these boys, and with the feeling of going it alone against all odds that has made this protean writer-director-producer Hollywood's most famous and flamboyant outsider. -By Richard Corliss
...weathered head shielded from the sun by a broad black hat. He moved to the Spanish island on Gertrude Stein's recommendation ("It's paradise if you can stand it") and has spent most of the past 50 years in the cliff village of Deya being crusty, godlike and protean. Graves' bibliography lists 59 collections of poetry, 20 works of prose fiction, 43 books of essays, autobiography and criticism, four anthologies, ten translations and one play...
...easy trying to establish your identity when you are the wife of protean Writer Norman Mailer, 49, especially when you're an artist in your own right. A former art instructor from Russellville, Ark., Norris Church Mailer, 33, has hardly been hurt by familial connections, but her oils are better than many a skeptic would expect. Last week the artist's work went on display in a one-woman show in Manhattan's SoHo district. For her depiction of down-home folks sitting on front stoops or ambling along Main Street, Church uses family, friends and even...