Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...preface to his masterwork, Leaves of Grass. Never before had an American writer captured this relationship between the word and the state, the poem and the nation. Emerson wrote Whitman a few weeks after the publication of Leaves of Grass, saying he found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed...
...piece, and one is left wishing that the needleworkers had had better designs to work on than Chicago's. Nevertheless, The Dinner Party will clearly acquire what is, for a static work of art, a huge audience. It is simple, didactic, portentous, gaudily evangelical and wholly free of wit or irony; it is to feminism what the big dioramas of the 19th century were to American curiosity about landscape, or war memorials to patriotism...
There were two James McNeill Whistlers. One was the artist of the putdown. Oscar Wilde: "I wish I'd said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar, you will." The other was the artist of subtle landscapes and unprecedented arrangements of color and light. The wit was amply recorded in his autobiography The Gentle Art of Making Enemies...
...rather, a rough synopsis of a lively and incautious new play, The Romans in Britain, whose combination of ancient history, contemporary politics and ageless human indulgence has created Britain's biggest theatrical controversy in a decade. Howard Brenton's below-the-belt pageant, written with profane wit and political passion, is presented under the high-flown auspices of the National Theater, which has been threatened in the ensuing dustup with various reprisals, including the withdrawal of government endowment that totals over $1.5 million...
...just the wit that keeps the bruised athletes interested. Fadden has been around the world, by his account, 15 times and has a trip to China (his second) planned for after the football season. A widower, Fadden always travels by himself and never in tour groups. "I wouldn't learn anything talking to people on tours. I talk to the local people--whores, priests, chiefs of police, racketeers--I talk to them all." And then brings the stories back to Dillon--always in time for fall football practice...