Word: raconteurs
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...impassioned banjoist, a nimbly authoritative clog dancer, a soulful singer of folk music and an enthralling tall-tale raconteur. He gyrates to the pipes of Pan. He is making his theatrical debut in Chicago's Body Politic Theater, in an evening of intimate, unmarred intensity...
...does Farrell's style help much. Like some windy raconteur at the bar of the Raffles Hotel, he is diffuse and banal, occasionally clutching at his listener's elbow with a moralizing aside. His metaphorical flights can plummet ludicrously, as when he compares the cross section of a moment in history to a severed leg of lamb, "where you see the ends of the muscles, nerves, sinews and bone of one piece matching a similar ar rangement in the other." His characters "sink their teeth" into "weighty problems," accept things "lock, stock and barrel," and come to clanging...
...Hugo van Lawick (Morrow; 272 pages; $29.95) is a predator's portrait gallery, set on the golden plains of Tanzania's Serengeti. Having spent some 16 years observing and photographing wild animals in Africa, Van Lawick has a scientist's understanding of beastly behavior and a raconteur's way with anecdotes. But his long suit is photography: studies of sociable lions coping with the problems of love life and day care, graceful leopards stalking their prey, packs of hyenas engaging in gang warfare, and endearing cheetah families at play-all unique glimpses of the harsh beauty...
Plomer once compared himself to "a craftsman, a scholar, an engineer, or a scientist" in the quest for proper literary form; but he was entertaining in whatever medium he chose. Convinced that pleasure was an essential component of literary criticism, Plomer preferred the engaging voice of a raconteur to the severe objectivity of a scholar. "Why should we be hardened?" he wondered. "Who wants to be a fossil?" This generosity of spirit made him a popular figure on BBC radio and television, which he mastered despite his professed aversion for modern technology...
...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...