Word: witting
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...Wit and tragedy, both are evoked and invoked with consummate artistry clarity and immediacy: "And as I see these things in the light of lamp, all perishable and transient, how bound up I know I am to all that is human endeavor, to all that past and to all that shall be, to all that shall be lost and leave no trace," Long before this penultimate sentence, the vision is clear, through this prose that is not only a lens but a prism...
...Brighton Beach, the Eugene of Biloxi Blues knows how little he knows. He is aware enough of the larger world to realize how many perils, including the war, may bar his path to glory. And through the nudging of his wise and principled friend Arnold Epstein (played with ferocious wit by Barry Miller), Eugene begins to grasp that his charm and amiability may mask the moral flaw of self-absorption. When Arnold stingingly accuses Eugene of being "a witness," devoid of passion and commitment, the insight may make an audience reconsider its feelings about the character and also its author...
Underneath that overweight, stuttering, bumbling, scuffed-shoe exterior there may be someone with intelligence, wit, competence and true competitive ability. But who knows unless the exterior reveals the interior? And so an industry has come along dedicated to making men and women look good on the job so they can perhaps rise to top management posts in their companies...
...pleasure in this book lies in the way Barnes circulates among his historical and imaginary characters and in his agile writing strategies. Obviously he has pinched a thing or two from Nabokov, like the brazenness and wit of Pale Fire. Barnes concocts wonderful lists, full of unnerving distinctions: animals, for instance, an enumeration of Flaubert's many parrot references, along with the fact that there are no parrots in Madame Bovary. A chapter contains contrasting chronologies, one of the author's public career and honors, the other of his failures and the early deaths of many of his family...
...from the heart. A child of the Midwest during the '40s and early '50s, Schickel belongs to the last generation that automatically placed "silver" before "screen" and "glamorous" before "star." The world of celebrities, he confides, became "The Great Other Place"--a promised land of grace and charm and wit where nobody was ordinary, nobody was dull...