Word: witting
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TUNC, by Lawrence Durrell. Lush Mediterranean settings, evocative nature writing and ribald wit are the underpinnings of this exuberant novel about an omniscient computer and its inventor's ambiguous struggles for freedom...
...round-faced scholar who represents North Viet Nam in France. In his years as Hanoi's best-known envoy to the West, Bo has grown grey, stylish and somewhat stout on the haute cuisine of hostesses delighted by his foxy charm and affable wit. Hanoi watchers are convinced that Bo is kept in the know by his government. Three weeks ago, his henchmen were already murmuring that "we are prepared to accept Paris, if the U.S. will...
...Diaries and Letters gave a penetrating analysis of the Establishment; in Kent, England. Husband of the late novelist Vita Sackville-West and son of a Brit ish lord, Nicolson moved with ease through the rooms at the top, recording with candor and wit the intrigues and personalities of Europe's destiny shapers. He was devoted to Churchill, disdainful of De Gaulle, yet found nearly everyone fascinating. "Only one person in a thousand is a bore," he once told his son, "and he is interesting because he is one person in a thousand...
...protests his right to protest too much, with some of the purplest prose apotheosizing America written since the rhetorical mauve of Thomas Wolfe ("Brood on that country who expresses our will. She is America, once a beauty of magnificence unparalleled . . . tender mysterious bitch"). For the most part, his genuine wit and bellicose charm, and his fervent and intense sense of legitimately caring, render The Armies of the Night an artful document, worthy to be judged as literature...
Wherever possible, Holroyd allows Strachey to speak for himself, whether he was dropping Bloomsbury epigrams (on T. S. Eliot: "I fear it will take him a long time to become a letter writer"), or taking his place as the boldest public wit since Wilde. Strachey never hesitated to flaunt his homosexual inclina tions. His finest moment may have come during his court hearing as a conscientious objector in 1916, when he was asked what he would do if he saw a German soldier raping his sister. Strachey paused two beats, then remarked: "I would try to interpose my own body...