Word: witting
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...modest houses so the sky is evident. He hopes that your mornings are absolutely still except for birds, but that the evenings bulge with human outcry, families calling to one another in the darkening hours. He wishes you small particulars: a letter received indicating sudden affection, an exchange of wit with a total stranger, a moment of helpless hilarity, a flash of clarity, the anticipation of reading a detective thriller on a late afternoon in an electric storm...
...Undergraduate English Oration," written and delivered by Karen Fingerman '87. This speech, supposedly an example of the finest eloquence Harvard and Radcliffe can muster, was delivered in an undistinguished style, riddled with the moronic cliches Harvard students have tried to live down for years, and written with the wit and grace I might expect from a not very intelligent ninth grader in a remedial composition course. To judge from the comments of my friends and the reaction of the audience, I surmise I was not alone in finding this speech insulting in its unctuous stupidity...
...there is plenty of attention to the veneer of the gilded age: high society in New York, Newport and Washington, with occasional forays into England and France. Vidal handles the gatherings of the very bright and very rich with meticulous attention to the furnishings and small outbursts of naughty wit. Mrs. John Jacob Astor appears, commenting on the trials of idle affluence: "Now I play bridge. It is exactly like being alive." Vidal also throws in teasers to keep knowledgeable readers on their toes. Roosevelt's outspoken daughter Alice is quoted on her desire to leave Washington: "Scenes of former...
...Empire, Gore Vidal continues to rewrite American history with charm and naughty wit. -- Martin Amis' nuclear forebodings...
...engrossing spectacle: a mind, albeit weird, attempting to make sense out of the overwhelming flood of data that most people dismiss as daily life. Despite, or perhaps because of, what the narrator calls "my divagations and aberrations, my absurdities," More Die of Heartbreak crackles with intelligence and wit. The novel is not only proof that Bellow, 72, can live up to his own standards; it is also a reminder of how diminished a thing postwar American fiction would have been without...