Word: witness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Farewell, Then, Sweetheart." Between battles, Sir Richard reminisced: "There was a bruise on your left thigh." Often he muttered tenderly: "Beloved half-wit!" At last, Honor flung off the bed sheets "and let him look upon the crumpled limbs that he had once known whole and clean." "Farewell, then, sweetheart," cried Richard, and rode away...
...Novel. Brideshead Revisited is a tragicomedy of Britain between World Wars I & II. Like its author's life, it opens with mockery, ends in religious dedication. Half of it glitters with wit, the other half is rigorously solemn. Some of the writing matches Waugh's best (and there is little better); some of it is equal to his worst (sample: ". . . at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover. ... On the rough water ... I was made free of her narrow loins."). Those who believe that Author Waugh makes real sense only when he is writing apparent...
...failure. Only once since his teens had he seen the role performed. He had read very little about it, and he was "terrified by the enormous size of the character. . . ." But he constantly remembered Falstaff's "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." No mere butt, no mere burlesque, Richardson's fat knight is a restrained, highly intelligent, altogether conscious comedian, an artful creator of merriment. Hence his final fall from grace seems not pathetic but tragic...
...abandoned South Sea Eden: "No, sir, dere's no snakes, no sharks, nevaire 'ot, nevaire col'. . . . You don't have to work on de Island- jist pick fruit off de tree. . . . Same when you're hungry for girl. . . . She's laugh and go wit you. . . . An' all de girls . . . is vierge [virginal]-all de time...
...toting hero of this Great Adventure is the soul of Logan Pearsall Smith viewed under the aspect of eternity. Author Smith, ex-Quaker, ex-American, is one of the few contemporary writers of English prose who can afford to be so viewed. For if stylistic perfection, embalming a wry wit and a flawless sense of human folly, has any preservative powers, the four slender volumes* gathered into this brief (197-page) book have a better chance than most contemporary writing to survive the impartial ages...