Word: wits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...none of the engaged imagination, the sense of a transforming mind at work, that one gets in, say, Miro's wild versions of a 17th century Dutch interior, down the road at the Museum of Modern Art. Lichtenstein's are clever and highly worked, but while acknowledging their wit and skill, you would rather be looking at the real origins of these pastiches. Civilized irony is a grace and an asset, but it doesn't need to be pumped up to the size of the Sistine ceiling. In this later work, one sees the triumph of industry over inspiration. "What...
...Margarito, as for many of the other characters in the stories, Europe is a new world, and they become conquistadors of a sort, discovering the people who "discovered" them. Garcia Marquez orchestrates this series of reversals with wry wit and irony. Latin American intellecutals have long remarked that for Europeans the Americas were a sort of blank page on which they could write what they dreamt of and needed and imagined. America was a utopia which they tried to possess and in which they tried to create a different version of Europe. And America was also a wilderness, a primeval...
...This morning I began a new longish poem...The poem gives off a posthumous odor." His lack of self-pity, personal style and use of the diary form make his ideas about work an engrossing and fast read. His speech resonates with the same richness of expression, sharpness of wit...
...immeasurably better, less fake, more felt, and smarter than any of its obvious comparisons. The tunes are real tunes--you hum them--the rhythms roll along sharply, and rather than being (in They Might Be Giants fashion) cleverly amused at their own amusing cleverness, the Wimps put their wit to work in songs with real emotional resonance, songs like "Steam Rolling, But It Wasn't Steam Rolling" (which is really about the hopes we have for pop music, and how we lose them as we grow up). Failed term papers, dead-end jobs and general achy clumsiness are among...
...Werner is most known for her trenchant wit and mordant bon mots, but on that dreary afternoon we sought her out--not without some trepidation, for stories of her cruelty to the media are legion--to chat about her new project, a rock/operatic adaptation of Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park." The project has been the topic of conversation in the best dining halls and common rooms this season, in no small part because of Ms. Werner's alleged connections to organized crime (which have never been substantiated, as she is quick to point...