Word: vividness
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Yellow Jack (by Sidney Howard in collaboration with Paul de Kruif; produced by the American Repertory Theatre) is still, after 13 years, a vivid stage document. It tells the story of the search for the cause of yellow fever and, without too much sentimentality, portrays the heroism of men' who gambled their lives in the quest...
...Edouard walked among the old men and women in mourning, and saw the master's coffin covered with earth. Edouard knew that Bonnard loved color more than anything in the world, and he had bought a bunch of carnations to go with the somber wreaths. Tucked into the vivid crimson of Edouard's carnations was a white card. A mon cher Maitre, said the hesitant scrawl, avec mon regret eternel...
These descriptive passages succeed brilliantly. Author Lowry presents the Mexican scene with such vivid lavishness that by the time the reader has reached the end of Under the Volcano there is not an unfamiliar bird, beast or grain of dust. But the method which succeeds so well in regard to landscape is unendurable in regard to the human mind and soul. Author Lowry's psychoanalysis-with its interminable interior monologues and devotion to the tiniest turns of thought-results in a prose so coagulated by indiscriminate introspection that it bogs down like the characters it describes...
Carl Sandburg's Prairie Years and War Years are drawn upon, as are the biographies by Lord Charnwood, Beveridge, Tarbell, etc. But some of the most vivid passages are from rarely read 19th Century sources, among them Donn Piatt's Memories (1887), Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes (1868). Sample glimpses...
...passengers killed per 100 million passenger-miles flown on scheduled flights. But in the last four months, 74 men, women & children have died in U.S. airline crashes. Etched into the public's mind last week were pictures of crumpled wreckage and gobbeted bodies that were far more vivid than any statistics. In Congress, South Carolina's Representative L. Mendel Rivers cried: "There's something wrong with the whole doggone setup and something ought to be done about...