Word: skillful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This success as a story-teller is, however, only one aspect of the author's technical skill. By presenting the saga in the form of a fairy tale, the author has freed himself to present his own view of the world, untrammeled by popular prejudice and preconception. To create a hero or to pit man against fate in the world of familiar experience is next to impossible, for the modern reader has long taken for granted the scientific proposition that man makes his own history, no matter how far from his hopes it may appear...
Structural and dramatic skill alone have never made a successful epic, however. Effectiveness of expression is probably the most important single criterion. The written word has in this respect always been at a disadvantage when compared with the oral epic. Writers, unlike bards, can test neither the effectiveness of their subject matter nor its mode of expression, for they lack the opportunity to repeat, modify, and retest their work...
...amount of skill in acting and producing can make The Bandeirantes into good theater. The play, however, does raise the question of how much subtlety of expression and meaning a writer of poetic drama has to sacrifice for the sake of clarity. Plays, perhaps, more than any other form of literature, must be capable of raising and sustaining the interest and immediate involvement of the audience. If the language of a play is subtle to the point of obscurity, and if the action thereby appears unmotivated, then the audience will grow bored and the work will fail. It seems...
Only the dashing skill of the Scandinavians, Swiss and Austrians in the skiing events kept Russia's team lead as low as it was. More than any other single competitor, Austria's Anton ("Toni") Sailer held back the new giants of winter sport. Cortina's only three-time gold-medal winner (giant slalom, slalom and downhill), handsome Toni Sailer was the undisputed hero of the Winter Olympics. Thousands of his countrymen crossed the border to watch him schuss to victory, his well-known white cap topped with streamers, his bright white smile gleaming under dark goggles...
...Toni's skill, days before the games ended the Russians were far enough in front to throw a victory party. All the medals they had won were reawarded by the Soviet National Health and Sports Commissar. Winners also got appropriately inscribed chocolate cakes. Later, there were still more medals, still more cakes for the Russian hockey team, which provided the last big surprise by beating Canada 2-0 to take the Olympic title...