Word: raconteur
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...become the war sage looking at life through the war glasses of an ironist. Robert C. Benchley is almost human. Perhaps if I could see him weep once, I should actually believe in his humanity. Thomas Masson is human; but his humor is the genial story. He is the raconteur. He is not a nifty hound like Marc Connelly, nor a worshiper of the sentimentally bizarre like Heywood Broun. Of course, my favorite humorist is Donald Ogden Stewart. He is a friend of mine, and I am not ashamed to write about it. Quite well, I remember a breakfast...
...spinner. The writer who takes his trade seriously as art with a capital " A " finds the process of creating a masterpiece onerous. Take Joseph Conrad, for example, who made a statement on his arrival here, or was so quoted, that he had never learned to enjoy writing. But the raconteur, whose one guide is a brilliant imagination who lets his only guide be the swift telling of a tale of life, love, mystery and the complications along the side lines. That must be real...
...indifference and success and falling back on odd jobs as a waiter or laborer when broke. He was an easy spender and a rolling stone and his Wander-jahre brought him the knowledge of three things?that he had a certain gift as a smoking-car or pool-parlor raconteur, that he was attractive to women, and that, as he grew older, he wanted some more permanent success than his roving habits offered...
...twisting his phrases, of rolling his tongue or of winking his eye. Stephen Leacock's popularity has lasted longer than most. From Literary Lapses to My Discovery of England his books have been funny with a certain consistency. Canadian by birth, professor of political economy by profession, a raconteur who has only one equal in my experience [Irvin Cobb], he is a solid, jolly, gloom- defying gentleman. Ruddy of countenance, with hair slightly graying and usually rumpled, a bristly mustache, large shoulders and a stocky trunk, he talks positively and punctuates his conversation with loud and infectious laughter...
...rather as a raconteur with a dash of Hazlitt and Lamb, than as a protagonist of conservatism and taut galluses that Mr. Lyons is interesting. "The Merry Wait" is one of the most finished of the stories, and the songs the Wait sings to spread Christmas cheer deserve framing or something better. This...