Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...takes fully five minutes of the first scene to forget the conscious striving for verbal effect and throughout the evening there are constant reminders that this is Hemingway speaking, he of the fresh, young, modern, American prose style. His dialogue is excellent in many sections of the play. But it frequently becomes obtrusive, thereby ending its usefulness and going so far as to detract from the play itself. Here is a case where conscious striving for effect has killed the effect itself...
Richard Llewellyn is one more of those writers who love their common native speech and who use it with a sensuous efficiency which, in its verbal splendor, its folksy lilt and whine, approaches literary affectation. Yet in this, his first published novel (he has destroyed five), he has developed a hypnotic ability to do precisely what he pleases. His Morgans, those they live among, the country they inhabit, every incident, every reflection Huw Morgan ventures on the whole matter, have an even radiance and euphony plus a rock-bottom tangibility. If it be only would-be great How Green...
...illuminating introduction, Mr. Dorson makes a general discussion of "Frontier Humor and Legend." He treats with the exaggeration, verbal imagery, and other conventions of this frontier humor. Most significantly of all, he mentions the "unmistakable sameness to the varied versions of the American tall tale--It is the frontiersman's fun, his escape, his opportunity to create." The Crockett Almanacs are the true expression of the frontier; as such Mr. Dorson has done a valuable service in making this material accessible...
...late Huey Long's capacity for raising political hell. Mitchell Hepburn rammed through the Ontario Legislature a resolution condemning the Ottawa Government for inefficiency in conducting the war (TIME, Jan. 29). With this Liberal stiletto still quivering between his broad shoulders, Prime Minister King prepared to face the verbal scalpels of Conservative Surgeon Manion...
...Guiterman smile is teasing-the smile of a verbal sweetmeat-maker who knows how words can be tenderized, much like prunes, to please the palates of the literarily refined. Guiterman's tenderization process consists in rhyming and chiming big and little, tough and honeyed words together, and packing them into tight verse forms, that insure a close misfit...