Word: shrewd
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Democracy makes every man forget his ancestors. So thought De Tocqueville, the observer who for more than a century trapped the American character in his shrewd apercus. That character is too mutable to stay contained. Today it is frantically climbing family trees. After Haley's comet, not only blacks but all ethnic groups saw themselves whole, traceable across oceans and centuries to the remotest ancestral village (see LIVING...
Irwin Blye will never be mistaken for Philip Marlowe: he is handmaiden to the nation's lawyers, a shrewd middleman in America's judicial process. His assignments, almost always from attorneys, involve collecting evidence that is presentable and persuasive in court. The highest praise for the shamus comes from a lawyer feared in settlement circles as a "matrimonial bomber": "Irwin Blye puts things together. He knows the law." He also knows civil liberties and how to abuse them. To him information is power. His weapons are things like UCC-11 forms (for $3 you get everything on anyone...
Blye also shares the conviction with his thriller counterparts that he is a shrewd listener and talker. With poor people, a strong stomach counts. Says he: "I've had to drink coffee out of cracked cups with roach wings floating around inside." But if Blye sits at their tables, they shed their mistrust. With the more affluent, a smooth line of backchat comes in handy...
Middleaged, heavyset, slow of step and quiet of speech. Mother Kusters is betrayed by her eyes. Even when she is hurt and puzzled-which is much of the time in this movie-there is something lively and shrewd in them. One senses that in tragic circumstances she has found a challenge worthy of the reserves of fortitude and understanding she has been treasuring up through a dreary little life...
...least there were the memorable fights over seats for the ticket holders who were delegated to the rear of the cavernous theater, where the seat numbers have been obliterated over 60-odd years. For the others, there were only yawns and bitterness, bitterness toward the bunch of shrewd entrepreneurs who packaged the show so craftily that the dated goods--eight years after opening on Broadway--sells out every night in every city on the road company's itinerary...