Word: vivid
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Bulliet traveled to the area to research the book, which is replete with vivid little descriptions of American lushes in "dry" Saudi Arabia, of rebels in Afghanistan, of rich Europeans in Abu Dhabi. But this is the stuff that's easy to write. More impressive is the author's ability to portray everday American life in an entertaining manner. There is a Harvard secretary who moonlights as an amateur detective until she meets a real one. There is the aggressive Congressional aide who draws a little dagger next to the name of the CIA official his boss is about...
First-class, prime-time gore. And where does a Professor of the Middle East History get familiar with this type of thing? One assumes that Bulliet has a vivid imagination--that, or he must watch...
...concessions, albeit small ones, on each of the issues of concern to the students of that day. The victories were hard-fought--most of the violence that so alarmed the press was in fact directed against student demonstrators by the police' Pusey had called in--but they were real, vivid proof that students can, when they choose, have an effect on even this school. In the 10 years that have passed since then, however, those victories have slowly eroded--partly from declining student interest, but also from a renewed tendency of the men who run Harvard to ignore those interests...
LIKEWISE, individual performances, however strong, cannot carry the entire evening--but the company does succeed in creating some startlingly effective scenes when the script gives them the chance. What momentum the play has comes largely from Adam Swift's vivid and energetic portrayal of Falk. Swift's stage presence and timing, even on the lamest dialogue, are remarkable; they lend enough conviction and pathos to his love affair to set the show eventually lumbering on its way. Caroline Isenberg as Svanhild, though more subdued and occasionally sappy in her delivery, ably matches him; the endless philosophical platitudes the two exchange...
...neighbors speak of "El Norte" in almost mystical tones. Yet what they actually chat about is quite mundane--flushable toilets, electricity, and cars: Good Housekeeping magazine is their window on the promised land. What makes their prosaic vision doubly absurd is the peaceful beauty of their own surroundings: the vivid, innocent colors of the Indians' clothing and buildings; the quivering flowers and butterflies which bespeak a continual breeze; the soothing strum of a villager's harp; and the background warbling of exotic birds...