Word: vividness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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James has constructed a slick and engaging plot for A Taste for Death. But what makes her work more than just well-polished fiction is her consistently vivid characterizations and keen insights into daily human experience. Aside from a solid mystery, A Taste for Death is an effective psychological exploration of post-war British culture. James investigates the social mores of a defunct nobility and the predicaments of the working class, as well as the poltical attitudes of radical Labour extremists...
...reminiscent at times of Shostakovich. Harbison's dark, looming Ulysses' Bow is the second section of a two-part Homeric ballet and displays well its composer's skill at orchestration. Although the ballet has yet to be staged, Ulysses' Bow, at least, can stand on its own as a vivid showpiece, a ten- movement suite of rare power and dramatic immediacy...
...Paul Treat's milieu, Allan would be a very small paper tiger indeed. Actors live in a vivid, generous, but to Frances, dangerous world. "Paul had two main voices," she notes, "one for pleading and one for threats." In fact, as she finally realizes, behind all the bravado, the lighted-up codpieces in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the sadomasochistic improvisations, Paul is dedicated to the pursuit of money for his productions, and he is totally unprincipled in his methods. It seems that he really does love Frances -- or so the improbable happy ending would indicate...
Blighted Red Sox fans are not yet ready to hear that the longing may be better than the winning; the shiny faces of Jesse Orosco, Gary Carter and Knight are too vivid. But losing can be compelling too, when Boston is in form. Late after the final game, a bottle flew out of the night. Players being expendable by then, it naturally caught Traveling Secretary Jack Rogers on the bean. He led them home in an ambulance...
Have you ever been to a Valium picnic? Or been guilty of scoodling? Or yearned for warm fuzzies? If those terms are totally bewildering, you may want to take a crash course in "biz speak," the increasingly colorful, and sometimes off-color, language of the business world. The vivid vocabulary that bounces around corporate corridors has been collected and codified by Journalist Rachel S. Epstein and Nina Liebman, an industrial-development specialist for the New York State department of commerce, in their new book Biz Speak: A Dictionary of Business Terms, Slang and Jargon (Franklin Watts; $17.95). This handy compendium...