Word: sucker
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William Saroyan can raise the same kind of stirring laugh that Chekhov could. Sample: Jim Dandy's henchman reads him a sales letter from one ex-Jockey Earl Catfoot ("Why should you go without? Go with. . . . Don't be a sucker-be a winner."). The pessimist comments: "It wouldn't help." Says Jim Dandy, controlling his temper: "You may be mistaken. Weighing one hundred pounds, the man has ridden horses...
...Newsmen Pilat and Ranson narrate with raffish gusto what they call "an affectionate history" of the "island" (which by filling in its dividing ditch has long since been firmly attached to the mainland). They tell all: the evolution of the amusement parks, side shows, steeplechases, sly games to trap sucker money; the fortunes made and lost by Coney financiers ; the fires that periodically gutted the wooden jungles, during one of which lions ran in the streets with manes on fire; a female exhibitionist who smoked cigars "in a peculiar manner"; a sailor who took his girl through the darkened...
...small membership, no popular support, no subsidy for its newspaper, Fritt Folk, it looked last week as though the Samling would starve to death. It also seemed that the Nazis had written another definition for "quisling" into the dictionary. A synonym for "traitor" in many languages, it now means "sucker" as well...
...exaggerated "ivory tower." Mr. Roosevelt's characterization "underprivileged" is a euphemism when applied to A1 Groot, the protagonist of the tale. Driven by the cruel necessity of keeping his wizened little body alive, this "small, old, wrinkled boy of eighteen or nineteen" pits his wits against a gang of "sucker players" bent on taking his last grimy dollar. The reality of the situation has the emotional conviction of a nightmare; the suspense, built on a wealth of realistic detail, is as gripping as a war in Europe. Though the dialogue sometimes smacks of the Hemingway-Saroyan tradition, Mailer, who incidentally...
...gave his successor some pointers: "Be sure to lay off opera; the most important thing about symphonies is the number of minutes it takes to play'em-hold out for the short, noisy ones . . . They got you for the same reason they hooked me-first, you are a sucker and second, you are tone-deaf. That i; the type they want...