Word: raconteur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...1920s, the walrus-mustached Sonnenberg dressed like an Edwardian, cultivated the rich and powerful, and lived in a style most of his clients envied. In his 37-room, antique-filled mansion on Manhattan's Gramercy Park, he held lavish soirées at which he flourished as raconteur and keeper of secrets, wheeler-dealer and patron of intellectuals. Sonnenberg once proclaimed: "I want my house and office to convey an impression of stability and to give myself a dimension, background and tradition that go back to the Nile...
...here in the form of vignettes and metaphors; and even when he rattles on about the good and the true, Gardner never pontificates, never becomes self-righteous. Even when what he says sounds like it would suit a preacher among the unbaptized, his manner remains that of the elderly raconteur, sitting by the fire with a mug of ale and a pipe...
That introduction suggests a chalky professor lamenting the decline of English since the invention of the cathode-ray tube. In fact, the author is also a lively raconteur, poet (Blue Juniata), critic (A Second Flowering) and living history of the liberal temper. At 79 he is older than the century, and wiser. He has witnessed the failure of his early radicalism and watched favorite writers fall into neglect and obscurity. Yet, almost alone of his generation, he remains unafflicted by bitterness. Every chapter of -And I Worked at the Writer's Trade reveals a humane and spacious...
...evening has the flavor of a tall tale recounted by an accomplished barroom raconteur. The story derives from a little civic melodrama that really took place in a small Texas town some years ago, and it is engagingly rich in regional nostalgia and spiced with delicate bawdry. Not surprisingly, the co-author of the libretto is a storyteller of no mean skill, Larry L. King, an accomplished journalist who wrote a compact account of the actual facts underlying Whorehouse after they occurred. To tell it as it is in the show, a rural community, Gilbert, has long tolerated, secretly relished...
DIED. Nicolas Nabokov, 74, composer, author and witty raconteur who hobnobbed with the top musicians of his generation; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. A Russian-born cousin of the late novelist Vladimir Nabokov, he got mixed reviews from critics for his flashy ballet scores (Don Quixote, Ode). But he won universal acclaim from the arts world as an organizer of international music festivals in Rome, Tokyo and Paris during the 1950s and early '60s. Nabokov also had a career as an urbane social chronicler (Old Friends and New Music, Bagazh...