Word: witting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Publisher Frank Sheed), has written a quiet, sound little story, but probably one destined to make a punctuation mark in the long catalogue of those who attended Oxford and survived to write about it. The book denotes a haunting change since Max Beerbohm's glittering undergraduate duke, orator, wit, scholar and élégant set Zuleika Dobson and the Isis on fire, or even since Waugh's Lord Sebastian Flyte lugged his Teddy-bear to the barber...
...roast mutton, and the entanglements of adultery, but the reader feels compelled to check each incident with the solemn preamble-is such and such really putrid or merely pathetic, is it cause or merely effect? Despite such shortcomings, the author's prose is graceful and precise, his wit is sharp, and he can complicate a comic situation to the point of inspired silliness...
With a socio-philosophical turn of mind and a sometimes puckish, sometimes pawkish humor, Macdonald has also shown a scholar's doggedness in sifting a stupefying quantity of material, and in separating the living wit from the dead cats flung in literary battles long ago. The parody buff will find few representative favorites missing here (J. C. Squire is one). Macdonald was uplifted by his rediscovery of The Stuffed Owl (title taken from a wonderfully woeful Wordsworth poem of the same name), an Anthology of Bad Verse published in 1930. He was dispirited by the six-volume collection...
Anouilh's nihilistic chatter, as long as furiously paced and highly stylized suicides, seductions, and wit keep it from self seriousness, is delightful. The characters are stereotypes, and the ironies are always pleasant. (Th General's friend, Dr. Bonfant, announces that life must be lived like a cavalry charge, and then goes home to be browbeaten by his own shrewish wife. When Gaston, the secretary, hints that he is falling in love, the General shouts, "You must gorge yourself on cheap novels!" And Gaston replies, "No, sir, on the classics, exclusively. But the course of events is frequently quite similar...
...Actor-Playwright Peter Ustinov were to ad-lib a novel on the stage or before a TV camera, it might turn out very well. With his wit, his storyteller's flair and his crafty talent for wedding the ridiculous to the dramatic, he might easily become an important prose bard. But Ustinov wants to write. While he did reasonably well in his engaging 1957 comedy, Romanoff and Juliet, he failed badly last year in his book of short stories. Add a Dash of Pity. To his credit, Ustinov refuses to quit: he has written a first novel...