Word: witnessed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Oscar Levant's public image, if he still has one, is a blend of an exhibitionistic hypochondriac, an acerb wit, and a concert pianist who knows far more about music than he ever applied to the keys. All these Levantine facets faithfully reflect the man; or, to put it another way, he reflects them. The distinction is academic. After a lifetime largely devoted to his own self-construction, Levant himself probably cannot draw the line between the real Oscar and the one he invented. This book comes as close to defining it as its author will ever...
...Stevenson's loss is immeasurably great for the U.S. and for the U.N. The admiration and love that he was given outside our country were earned through his intellectual breadth, his human warmth and spontaneous wit. I spend more time out of the U.S. than in it on my concert tours, and I was able to point to Mr. Stevenson as an American with profound understanding of world problems, with agreement from people of all countries. He saw to the core of life with a sensitivity rare in a person in public, political life-and it was this sensitivity...
...Otherwise, Bernstein consulted only the rules defining "clarity, precision and logical presentation"-plus the generally reliable canons of his own taste. This makes for a journey past the shoals and promontories of English usage that is more casual than comprehensive, but frequently edifying and unfailingly illuminated by the Bernstein wit...
...escape the limitations of his fate at Polycarp, an educational institution in Slow Rapids, Ind., where the Waltz grass dies every summer. He is more grammatical than his old man, but that is all. He too is a prisoner, trapped by circumstance and surrounded by the De Vries wit, which leaks out all over. And why does it? Because, in extremis, scalped and trussed, there is only one thing to do. Laugh...
...Whether describing a loggerhead shrike in North Carolina or an egghead racist in New Orleans, wandering over Beverly Hills ("reminds you of the environs of Florence and Fiesole") or Washington, D.C. ("the chalk-white city half in love with Time"), White displayed even in this disjointed, unedited chronicle the wit and insight that made his novels classics in their author's lifetime...