Word: apercus
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...wonderful creations of Gaudi, Hughes spends much of the book recounting the history in order to explain the architecture--examining the roots in order to look more closely at the tree, as he might put it. Much of the most penetrating commentary--as well as some of the funniest apercus--is in the second half of the book...
...disease. Nothing can save Bernie in the long run, but this story, the best in the book, provides moments of touching recognition and redemption. Shacochis inserts, with no visible effort, an extraordinary amount of detail into his short fiction. The fashion in stories these days runs toward attenuated apercus. None of these will be found here, only pieces that are unstylishly generous and memorable...
...rest of us grow up." Wise child. The children's fatal interdependence provides the subject of this piercing first novel. Author Robert Boswell smoothly oscillates from third to first person, giving the principals a chance to confess and dream. The voices are wholly convincing, and Boswell's apercus provide psychological criticism, as when Edward unconsciously utters his own epitaph: "No one wants to hear about a good man being good. It's the failings people want to hear." Wise father...
...these very apercus are what mar the text. In adding to Defoe's repertory company, Coetzee has introduced urgencies that are neither fresh nor illumined, only brilliantly disguised. Flashing back and forward, scattering allusions, adopting a series of poses and styles, the author is less reminiscent of a prior novelist than of contemporary street mimes who build hints until the audience shouts in recognition. Readers of this achingly symbolic retelling are likely to give a similar response. But will they applaud the author -- or will they really be congratulating themselves...
...composer who employs himself as a librettist has a fool for a collaborator. Goya's scan-deep profundity is revealed in such apercus as "I have to paint to live. But I only live to paint." Never once, though, does Goya show its hero in the throes of creation. There is little sense of the penetrating psychological insight of his official portraits, and important events like his rise to court painter are only alluded to, or take place offstage. The horrors of the Napoleonic invasion, reflected in Goya masterpieces like the stark, brutal The Third of May, 1808, are suggested...