Word: raconteur
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Those afflicted with the syndrome (named after Baron Münchhausen, an 18th century raconteur whose tales of adventure made his name synonymous with exaggeration) are driven to immerse themselves in hospital dramas. With a combination of medical knowledge and dramatic flair, victims produce or fake symptoms so skillfully that they are admitted to hospitals, treated and often operated on for nonexistent disorders...
...impassioned banjoist, a nimbly authoritative clog dancer, a soulful singer of folk music and an enthralling tall-tale raconteur. He gyrates to the pipes of Pan. He is making his theatrical debut in Chicago's Body Politic Theater, in an evening of intimate, unmarred intensity...
...does Farrell's style help much. Like some windy raconteur at the bar of the Raffles Hotel, he is diffuse and banal, occasionally clutching at his listener's elbow with a moralizing aside. His metaphorical flights can plummet ludicrously, as when he compares the cross section of a moment in history to a severed leg of lamb, "where you see the ends of the muscles, nerves, sinews and bone of one piece matching a similar ar rangement in the other." His characters "sink their teeth" into "weighty problems," accept things "lock, stock and barrel," and come to clanging...
...Hugo van Lawick (Morrow; 272 pages; $29.95) is a predator's portrait gallery, set on the golden plains of Tanzania's Serengeti. Having spent some 16 years observing and photographing wild animals in Africa, Van Lawick has a scientist's understanding of beastly behavior and a raconteur's way with anecdotes. But his long suit is photography: studies of sociable lions coping with the problems of love life and day care, graceful leopards stalking their prey, packs of hyenas engaging in gang warfare, and endearing cheetah families at play-all unique glimpses of the harsh beauty...
Plomer once compared himself to "a craftsman, a scholar, an engineer, or a scientist" in the quest for proper literary form; but he was entertaining in whatever medium he chose. Convinced that pleasure was an essential component of literary criticism, Plomer preferred the engaging voice of a raconteur to the severe objectivity of a scholar. "Why should we be hardened?" he wondered. "Who wants to be a fossil?" This generosity of spirit made him a popular figure on BBC radio and television, which he mastered despite his professed aversion for modern technology...