Word: witting
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...victor's formidable mother, Miss Lillian, was freely available at the old railroad depot, dispensing her startling wit and candor. His brother Billy was cheerfully posing for snapshots at the gas pump, permanent beer can ominously poised. Even the President-elect and his wife were visible, making occasional forays to greet childhood friends or to eat at the nearest restaurants-every forkful watched for significance by a merciless post-Watergate press corps. A sizable slice of the citizenry willingly guided the influx of strangers round the sites-Jimmy's birthplace, his country home, his father's simple...
...ahead of the times and once in a while turned, bowed low, gave the times a razz and dared them to catch up. The slow songs were heart stoppers, the fast ones adrenaline rushes of wit, low-down love and high, fabulous adventure. The songs became, all together, an orchestration of a generation's best hopes and fondest dreams...
...preface to his masterwork, Leaves of Grass. Never before had an American writer captured this relationship between the word and the state, the poem and the nation. Emerson wrote Whitman a few weeks after the publication of Leaves of Grass, saying he found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed...
...piece, and one is left wishing that the needleworkers had had better designs to work on than Chicago's. Nevertheless, The Dinner Party will clearly acquire what is, for a static work of art, a huge audience. It is simple, didactic, portentous, gaudily evangelical and wholly free of wit or irony; it is to feminism what the big dioramas of the 19th century were to American curiosity about landscape, or war memorials to patriotism...
...rather, a rough synopsis of a lively and incautious new play, The Romans in Britain, whose combination of ancient history, contemporary politics and ageless human indulgence has created Britain's biggest theatrical controversy in a decade. Howard Brenton's below-the-belt pageant, written with profane wit and political passion, is presented under the high-flown auspices of the National Theater, which has been threatened in the ensuing dustup with various reprisals, including the withdrawal of government endowment that totals over $1.5 million...