Word: witting
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Moral hypocrisy and human selfishness are no less favorite subjects of writers today than in other corrupt ages. Yet so often variations on this theme lapse into ponderous, and therefore ineffective, moralizing. But when our grosser sins, not only our foibles, are presented to us with wit and grace we take notice. Often the barbed needles of the comic writer pierce far deeper than the heavy blows of the ostensiby more serious dramatist...
Hitchcock's dialogue is consistently well-paced (if not delivered with consistent smoothness) and often piquant with dry wit. "You have the sensitivity of an artichoke" Muscari tells his jailer soon before the execution, and then is told he has visitors. "Are they publishers?" he asks quickly, but they are only advocates...
...that De Gaulle had read Les Pianos Mecaniques by Henri-Francois Rey. A French bestseller highly praised by the critics, Pianos is a sort of Dolce Vita set on Spain's Costa Brava whose main characters-a schizophrenic journalist, a neglected teen-age boy and girl, a half-wit charwoman-move through their pointless lives battling boredom with promiscuity. Sample passage: "She led him to the bed, still keeping their lips locked. Vincent lay down. Jenny detached herself. She began to undress him, with sure clean motions...
...interests: Jazz Pianist Dave Brubeck built such a deep rapport with him that he named his son Darius, and Milhaud occasionally shocks prissy listeners by saying that good jazz can steal his attention from dull classics any time. His youthful spirit echoes especially in his lively Provencal wit. Hoping to end an argument with him, a student once pleaded, "Doesn't music all boil down to a matter of taste?" "But of course," said Milhaud. "You have poor taste...
Marisol is quite solemn about her work, but somewhere in her mind is a sparkling reservoir of wit and an ability to phantasize that is as rich as a child's. Her art is that of the toymaker, whose creations are specifically designed to appeal to that part of the mind in which fantasy and reality seem identical. The only difference is that a toy can be outgrown; it seems doubtful that the same will soon be said of the work of Marisol...