Word: sketches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...does so quietly, but if it fails it sounds trite and silly. There is one notable White failure in this book that illustrates the point--to bring the horror of nuclear war home he seizes on the instructions given schoolchildren for what to do in case of attack. The sketch ends with a line of girls, including White's granddaughter, walking with handkerchiefs over their mouths. "I went outdoors again to push the swing some more for the little girl, who is always forgetting her handkerchief. At lunch I watched her try to fold her napkin. It seemed to take...
...Harvard's Cold Spring laboratories, ended the faculty members' public silence on the new guidelines. As the granddad of the DNA revolution, Watson enjoys a lot of respect; perhaps he alone had the status to voice what others were feeling. And towards the end of an otherwise dry sketch of early DNA research at Harvard, Watson decided to use that leverage...
...unmistakable, however, is often to be predictable. Barthelme seems to stage the same kind of illusion every time he writes. No, he does not write about Cortés and Montezuma in every story; in fact, he is not writing about them in the sketch quoted above. There is in fact no subject matter to his pieces. Characters and situations are used the way a hypnotist employs a pocket watch swinging at the end of a chain. It is the hypnosis that is important, not the swing of the watch. A short piece called The Party begins, "I went...
...first sponsor was the redoubtable General William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame), who took him along on a primitive steamship that pushed its way up the Missouri for 2,000 miles. Catlin returned by canoe with only two companions, clambering bluffs to sketch vistas, parlaying with chiefs to paint their portraits, draping wolf skins over his shoulders to stalk grazing buffalo on his hands and knees...
...even after she was fined $250 by a county judge for refusing to give the man's name to a grand jury. McCall did tell police that the suspect was not in St. John's at the time of the murder and that he resembled their composite sketch. Now Informant Kyle has left the hospital. Whether the suspect is still there or out on the street is anybody's guess...