Word: wordplay
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...REAL THING Tom Stoppard His witty wordplay would make even the Bard proud...
...within the medium is the name of the game here, and the author seems to enjoy tossing out symbols for their own sake, creating linguistic tricks, and taking flat-out risks--at once point, the word "Ha!" is repeated without interruption over nearly two entire pages. But this Joycean wordplay, disconcerting at first, eventually becomes clear for what it usually is--humor. And that's where the stories get their power. On a surface level, they're a series of often depressing vignettes about dissatisfied, disillusioned adults, but underneath one can find a slightly sardonic, yet often mirthful tone that...
...beach in the summer or in front of the fireplace on a cold Sunday night. The stories, as mentioned before, tend to start sounding the same when read quickly in order, and they deserve better than that. By reading them carefully, Moore's talent for description, clever wordplay and power through subtlety can be discovered and admired...
...Mike Myers' droll, brave impersonation, Rubell is a starstruck lout, a user-abuser, seductively snaky, cheerily malevolent; he could be Lolita's Clare Quilty without the gaudy wordplay. It'd be fun to see a movie about this Rubell. Alas, 54 focuses on the kids who worked for him: Shane the blond busboy (Ryan Phillippe), Anita the coat checker (Salma Hayek) and other cutie losers. The film tries to toss Saturday Night Fever's bridge-and-tunnel dreamers into the '70s' hottest disco. But for that to work, you need verve, edge and Travolta. All those are absent here...
...choice was preordained. After all, the lie in all its variations--the half-truth, the legalism, the critical omission, the elastic wordplay--is what he knows. Acrobatics--"I didn't inhale," the Flowers denial, the draft--are what brung him to the dance...