Word: woodenness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...moment, Jackson was what he has rarely been before: charismatic. It was the kind of transformation that political victory can work. For most of his long congressional career, Scoop has been a dutiful plodder, wooden and uncomfortable with crowds. He spoke in what was dubbed a "Movietone News voice"-a monotonous, stentorian delivery that politicians employed before public address systems were invented. But in Massachusetts, perhaps sensing victory early on, he began to unbend and even modulate his voice. Crowds became a challenge rather than a concern. When antibusing hecklers forced him off the podium at a Boston stop...
...superbly crafted--taut, gripping, smoothly written, and so forth. The fact is that's simply not it at all. Hailey's books are rather clumsily put together, all in exactly the same way, and while he could never be accused of overwriting his sentences are still graceless, his dialogue wooden, his characters two-dimensional. And his latest book, The Moneychangers, which came out in paperback last month, is a great deal like all his other books. It is about an American institution (banking); it is selling like hotcakes (number one on the bestseller lists); it is the product of what...
...evangelist will carry his campaign for theocracy to Florida primary voters next week, he said, in much the same way that he carried a 20-foot wooden cross across America, Europe and Subsaharan Africa--on foot...
...Fassi loves to regale his pupils with stories about Italian history, or show them his basement full of electric trains and handcrafted wooden ship models. How much time he will have for such pastimes in the future is debatable. "We go back home soon and rest," he said last week. "At least I hope. But I got some young skaters you should...
...resonance to Shirley Jackson's American-gothic short story The Lottery, the book tends to provoke rather than frighten. The author's poetic imagery highlights the New England scene and characters: "Beneath the high wind, a tongue of water rang against the scoured stones like the wooden clapper in a bell, warning that they were slippery." The Auctioneer becomes less a tale of suspense than a parable of politics. The open questions it poses are as old as society itself: What is the nature of power? What makes people cede control over their own destinies to the glib...