Word: oracular
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NORMAN MAILER STILL ROCKS BACK and forth on the balls of his feet when he talks. He still leaves the impression of a compact nuclear device as drawn by Herblock--shaking slightly on its launch pad, Yoda-shaped and oracular, although somewhat mellowed by the years. He is capable now of an occasional shrug that says, "Who knows...
Koons has, however, made a contribution to American culture in the form of comedy: the sight of so many critics, dealers and museum folk peering into the demitasse of his talent and declaring it an oracular well whose contents address issues, as the phrase goes, of class, race, money, sex, obscenity, beauty, power and desire. Art is short, bibliography long. Clearly, we are in Madonnaland, where every publicity hound -- oops, semiotician of mass culture -- must have his day in the museum...
After that she became the wittiest journalistic headhunter of the '70s. The list of her victims is long, but the names matter less than the grounds for their execution. Like all good essayists, she was basically a moralist, sketching types of irresponsible privilege (Schiff), proprietary righteousness (Betty Friedan), oracular emptiness (Theodore White), poses of profundity (Gail Sheehy) and head-over-heels self-infatuation (Brendan Gill...
Aghast, we cover our faces, confused and unable to choose between expressions of disgust and nervous laughter. What a surprise . . . who could have imagined . . . such horror. There is a moment of black epiphany at the revelation of a particularly heinous crime -- a moment that is both oracular and inexpressible. Statistics and forensic minutiae will eventually move in to cloud our vision. And the incessant patter of news updates will inevitably numb us, pushing onward the boundaries of our tolerance for atrocity. But in the beginning, as we make out the shape of the crime, as we see it unfolding like...
...father Michael Redgrave was playing Laertes opposite Laurence Olivier's Hamlet at London's Old Vic Theater. During the curtain call, Olivier gestured for silence and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight a star is born. Laertes has a daughter." Olivier probably thought he was being gracious rather than oracular. But the man generally acknowledged as the greatest actor of his age in the English- speaking world proved as inspired in his fortune-telling as in his art: the infant born on Jan. 30, 1937, has ripened into the greatest actress in the English-speaking world. Her trophies include the Oscar...