Word: raconteurism
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Henry L. Mencken appealed to a Baltimore court to restore to him his fireside social life, nocturnal rest, capacity to concentrate on his work, and general peace of mind-all gone now, said he. The thief of his serenity, deposed the editor-critic-raconteur-philologist's petition, was a dog next door who passed his life barking-a "large, powerful male dog of breed or breeds unknown to your orator." The barking, pursued Mencken, was "abnormally and extraordinarily loud, harsh, penetrating, violent, unpleasant, and distracting." He prayed that the court would compel his neighbor to take dog and bark...
Ascetic Sadist. Globular Alfred ("Hitch") Hitchcock has lately become an oblate spheroid by jettisoning some 90 Ib. of flesh. (His starting weight was 295 Ib., his favorite food, beefsteak.) But asceticism has not reduced Hitchcock's abilities as a humorist, raconteur, deadpan artist and the greatest director of cinema thrillers. At a large stag dinner party, when his turn came to enrich the traditional ambience of brandy & cigars with an off-color story, he murmured diffidently: "I have a story, but I'd best not tell it because it's rather long." The clamor...
...Raconteur...
...time before he realized that the line wasn't moving at all. While he was puzzling over this in his usual diffuse and disorganized manner, he observed Cpl. E. L. McDonald straggling out of the dining hall and asked what the bottleneck might be. "Oh, nothing much," replied the raconteur of Ruthruff and Ryan, "They're just having a little trouble making the horse lie still...
...Flaherty will leave for the Southwest Pacific to report World War II, replacing the News's George Weller, Pulitzer Prizewinner, who is ill. New News managing editor: Lloyd Downs Lewis, 52, a jack-of-many-newspaper-trades (book reviewer, historian, drama critic, author, sports editor) whom the late Raconteur Alexander Woollcott once called "the best newspaperman in the United States...