Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lectures on "Being a Woman Writer: Paradoxes and Dilemmas"; on "The Curse of Eve, or What I Learned in School"; on witches; and the lively tour de force which ends the volume, "Writing the Male Character." In these lectures, several of them first delivered at Harvard, Atwood's piercing wit, her incisive dissection of the pitfalls of male-female relations, and her considerable erudition all come together...
...replace the former intensity, with the unforeseen result that Balthus seems more given to pastiche now than he was 40 years ago. In a painting like Japanese Figure with a Black Mirror, 1967-76, the way he quotes the artificial perspective of Edo prints looks almost complacent, despite the wit ty sense of sexual packaging conveyed by the white obi round the girl's naked waist...
Memoirs of movie actresses are expected to be long on gossip, short on wit and veracity, and inferior in humility to the autobiographies of deposed presidential aides. They are also expected to be ghostwritten, or catered: you call the service, and they do the book. So much for expectations. Candice Bergen's account of her first 38 years not only is handwritten, it is one of the better books of the season so far: a shrewd, funny, loving and sometimes appalling account of how it felt to grow up in a family that was singular even in Hollywood...
Because all these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Hemenway, 62, provides one of the most difficult cases in modern American writing. The author's talent is unquestionable. His first collection showed fluency and wit; its title story, The Girl Who Sang with the Beatles, won the O. Henry Award in 1970. At the Border is Hemenway's first published work since that impressive debut...
...speakers leap about, separating and meeting again. But no amount of creative tinkering with platforms can convert these endless wranglings over marriage versus love, friendship versus faithfulness, adventure versus obligation, into a satisfying evening of theatre. Instead, the effect is something like that of bad Shaw--without the rapier wit...