Word: smileyness
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...answer turns out to be Le Carré. The Little Drummer Girl (its title an oblique allusion to a Christmas song set in the Holy Land) is both a daring departure from his earlier work and a triumph of narrative control. The long duel between George Smiley of British intelligence and Karla, his opposite number in the Soviet Union, came to an end in Smiley's People (1980), with Karla crossing over from East Berlin into Western arms. Le Carré's emphasis throughout the Smiley sagas was on the abstract detachment of his hero, his intellectual moves...
...time is 1961, when there actually were airwave couples like Les and Bess observing the absurd convention that breakfast was a time for smiley voices instead of burned toast and reviewing comedies like this. Nowadays, when the shows that used to be off-Broadway are on the main stem, and Broadway shows are running in the little houses, things like this open less glitzily. But the formula is as ever: one set, six characters, some brisk banter and a simple conflict in values bobbing along the sparkly surface...
...Style. "A lot of the music I play is music the Mardi Gras Indians do. The guys that did this thing-Professor Longhair, Smiley Lewis, Guitar Slim-died off. There was nobody to keep it alive except the few guys who worked with them. Me, James Booker, Huey Piano Smith, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint. I guess I would call my own style barrelhouse with blues and jazz mixtures. Rock 'n' roll...
...Callahan's description of auto-racing "ghouls" illustrates the American fascination with violence. But printing action photos of Gordon Smiley being killed and lying dead on the pavement caters to the sickness that your article condemns...
...dispatches on Smiley's death, it was quickly pointed out that nobody had died at the old "brickyard" since 1973, when Art Pollard was killed in qualifications, Swede Savage was fatally injured in the race, and Armando Teran was run over by a fire truck speeding the wrong way toward Savage's crash. (That was also the year Salt Walther was maimed, if maiming counts...