Word: deft
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...long on tension and surprises. That's a fair description of Christina Schwarz's Drowning Ruth (Doubleday; 338 pages; $23.95), which probably explains why, even before its publication, Miramax bought the screen rights for director Wes Craven. Readers should not wait for the film version, though, because this unusually deft and assured first novel conveys a good deal more than thrills and chills...
...week long, the Man from Hope was hovering over the Republican Convention. He was not merely its target but also its inspiration. When Bush said Thursday night that he is "not running in borrowed clothes," it was a deft dig at Gore but not altogether true, because Bush is fighting his father's fight with weapons borrowed from the enemy camp. His convention stole the script to Clinton's 1996 multicultural lovefest in Chicago, from the soaring gospel choirs to the fluffy centrist themes to the remote video hookups that beamed the candidate into the arena as he rolled through...
...stupidest reason for defensive political baseball is that the candidates are consciously talking to newspaper columnists and TV journalists, who in turn hunt only for their flaws in an effort to be clever and thus noticed. There's no trick in being clever and noticed; any deft young journalist can do it, and some--encumbered by fatal cuteness, disappointment or lack of dignity--never outgrow the impulse. Talking like Jackie Robinson, or like Ronald Reagan, our last sublimely corny President, takes more self-confidence and aggressive innocence but--provided that one means what one says--it pays...
BUSH: Listen, I'm not dealing in history, I'm dealing in the short term. I'm talking about how Republicans have been defined by a politically deft President. I'm faced with perceptions that Republicans don't care about newly arrived immigrants. I do care about them...
...breaking point in a Spanish village at the beginning of the Civil War. This art-house weepie, based on stories by Manuel Rivas, is impeccably Miramaxian in its Bambi-eyed child, its liberal attitude and its emotion-cuing score. O.K., but we fell for it--for the deft mood setting and the canny vignettes of young love and adult rancor. Fernan Gomez, nearly 60 years in films, carries himself (and the film) with the dignity of a gifted gentleman who knows how to transmit joy and endure suffering. Butterfly is a savory cocktail with a bitter twist...