Word: banter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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TRUST by George V. Higgins (Henry Holt; $18.95). Another installment of petty schemers and low-life banter for Higgins fans, but other readers will feel it takes far too long for the protagonist, a crooked used-car salesman, to get his comeuppance...
...surprisingly, the organizers of these factions have claimed that their clubs will not be exclusionary. But if a club's raison d'etre is social activity, how else will they choose their members except on the basis of personal attributes as important as cocktail-party banter...
...auto crushed in a trash compactor. He sells it instead, a characteristic act of greed that promises to get him in trouble. But Higgins seems much more interested in atmosphere than in denouement. There are long, long passages of the author's by now patented low-life banter, characters being long-winded and tedious about the banalities of their lives. Readers who like this sort of thing will love Trust. Others will wish that Earl had got his comeuppance a lot earlier in the book...
...another time and place the conversation might have been considered typical banter among co-workers. As they prepared to take off from Dallas last August, the crew of a Delta Air Lines 727 joked about subjects ranging from Marilyn Quayle's looks ("She looks like she's from Texas. She's got that horseface") to Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign ("It's scary that someone like that could get as far as he did") to the power of the news media ("They're such vultures . . . they're too powerful") and the dating habits of flight attendants ("In case we crash...
...coach, has coaxed his players into charm and clarity in telling myriad tales of mistaken identity, most of which turn on the interchangeability of gender. Mastrantonio lacks the requisite androgyny but is otherwise faultless. Woodard, one of four black leads chosen in admirably color-blind casting, excels at seductive banter, and Andre Braugher is thrillingly intense as a pirate who risks his life to help a shipwrecked princeling. Hines serves mostly as a vaudevillian onlooker whose antics are a reminder that he is the premier tap dancer...