Word: wordsmiths
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stability-impaired wordsmith we met 15 years ago in author Friedman's earlier novel About Harry Towns is still frisky, still foolish. Still capable, in fact, of careering into a writers' bar in lower Manhattan wearing, because of a recent mugging, only a sheet, and this early in a long evening. Friedman is funny and reliably irrelevant. Writing, he seems to be saying, is less dignified than the mail-order truss business, which is a truth on which to hang your...
...appeal is simple, direct, visceral. Us vs. Them. The Haves vs. the Have-Nots. The cry has a long and honorable history among Democratic presidential candidates. Dukakis' populist pitch began as far back as Labor Day, when he delivered a speech shaped by Bob Shrum, the veteran Democratic wordsmith who had designed Dick Gephardt's populist incarnation. Lee Atwater, George Bush's pugnacious campaign manager, admits, "I got a little worried after the Labor Day speech that they were going to catch on to the populist approach." But only last week did the Dukakis campaign go ballistic. "George Bush wants...
Jose Canseco, 24, the 6-ft. 3-in., 230-lb. Cuban (who, Detroit wordsmith Sparky Anderson says, "is built like a Greek goddess") homered in all the other games and persisted in stealing bases too. His 40-40 distinction in those cross categories ought to combine with Hershiser's record 59 zeroes to make quite a noise. In these anabolic times, a Washington reporter with only the evidence of his eyes has been able to incite chants of "ster-oids, ster- oids" in the bleacher sections around Canseco. But Jose has the grace to grin and make a muscle...
...Irving in Director Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey. The star, playing a Manhattan bookstore manager named Isabelle Grossman, is made to look tired and behave with moral myopia. Can't Isabelle see that the European author (Jeroen Krabbe) who courts her is just one more serpent-eyed wordsmith who would flatter a pretty woman's intellect to soften her resolve? Can't she tell that sweet-souled Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), a pickle salesman from the old neighborhood, is the guy for her? Isabelle's Yiddishe grandma (Reizl Bozyk) can tell, in cliches that fall from her lips like...
Speech-writers just don't get enough thanks for what they do. Bob Shrum, the , private wordsmith for the Kennedy family's public utterances, was called in to cobble together something for the convention's Kennedy reunion. He not only wrote John Kennedy Jr.'s introduction of Uncle Ted and Ted's it's-O.K.-to-still-be-a-liberal pep talk, but he also penned the Senator's gracious thank-you for his nephew's gracious introduction...