Word: witting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...interviewing Edgar Degas, has in a busy lifetime turned out more than a hundred books-novels, histories, art studies. To top off his career, Michel Georges-Michel this week is bringing out the American edition of his carefully culled memoirs (From Renoir to Picasso; Houghton Mifflin; $4). Glittering with wit and the reflections of the great, M. G.-M.'s book is not only lively anecdotal history but a refreshing reminder that the men who painted today's museum pieces were rich with the juices of life...
Author Templeton's wit is a subdued delight, and her mental antennae vibrate not only with a sense of the past but with an understanding of the present as well: "[Renaissance men] protested against the shortness of human life and against the instability of all things by being as alive as they possibly could be. They ate sensations by the spoonful and turned themselves into a salad of all sorts of contradictory human qualities. We today behave in the opposite manner. We imagine that the less different and the less conspicuous we are, the less we shall be noticed...
...hands folded, grew more animated when the talk shifted to the U.S.-Russian tension. He jabbed his finger didactically as he prophesied that "your grandchildren in America will live under Socialism." A metal tooth often glinted at the corner of a cunning smile, and his quick but heavy wit, like a fat lady with a flair for dancing, lunged repeatedly in scorn; e.g., "You must do away with your Iron Curtain and not be afraid of Soviet cooks arriving in the U.S. -I don't think they will make any revolution in your country...
...only newcomer to Nielsen's sacrosanct Top Ten this year. His canonization among the highly mortal immortals of TV has been a triumph-if that is the word-of manner. Ford has the warmth and expansiveness of a Baptist revivalist, some of the relentless cracker-barrel wit of an Alben Barkley or Will Rogers. No hayseed, he has parlayed his deep-dish Southern accent and soft, self-deprecatory ways into hard money. Says his manager: "He appeals to old people with his hymns and spiritual songs. He has a tremendous appeal to little youngsters because of the name Tennessee...
...Amis and the rest of his school part company, it will be because he is its only conscientious craftsman and its only notable wit. Even so, his humor travels no better than the average joke in Punch, and U.S. editions of Lucky Jim and a second novel. That Uncertain Feeling, have barely topped the 5,000 mark in sales. His fellow writers would probably fare even worse, for they write with a sloppy, cliche-ridden arrogance that has been absent from serious U.S. fiction since the heyday of James T. Farrell and the cult of social protest...