Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...letters Arthur Schnitzler instructed that a needle be thrust through his heart to remove any doubt of his death. As a novelist, short-story writer and playwright, best known for La Ronde, he had already probed the heart of the Viennese haute bourgeoisie with the lethal needle of wit, irony and skepticism, and pronounced it irrevocably dead...
...book--divided into eight sections, including the University, college life, politics, and "wit and wisdom"--is littered with information that will surprise or amuse you, pique your anger or imagination, or perhaps make no impression whatsoever. You will discover things that you may or may not wish to know, like the genesis of the tradition of shouting "Rinehart!" and the goldfish swallowing fad, which was originated in the Harvard Union on March 3, 1939 by Lothrop Withington Jr. '42. If kiosks, unionizing shuttle bus drivers and the proposed Third World center make you wonder what passed for controversy at Harvard...
...integrity, refused to change a single alexandrine. The play remained locked away. After five years, the playwright had added a few more lines flattering King Louis XIV, although he resisted substantial changes in the nature of the farce. He refused many more times to soften the sting of his wit, which he directed at the church, the aristocracy, the literary establishment--or anyone within reach...
...every line of dialogue there's a Wasp sting. Each actor built a solid reputation in off-Broadway theater; the first film for each was a sophisticated sci-fi horror show (Altered States for Hurt, Alien for Weaver) that exploited the performer's patrician features and willful wit. Now the makers of Eyewitness have conspired to play these two appealing obsessives against each other for off-center romantic comedy...
...paradox. It is a portrait in depth of a shallow man, a forgotten 18th century court composer so bedeviled by jealousy, the shock of his own mediocrity and the daunting genius of his principal rival that he encouraged Mozart's ruination and hastened his death. Full of wit and passion and measured extravagance, the performance has become perhaps the most warmly admired of the Broadway season...