Word: raconteur
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...travel companion, Dyer is a lively raconteur, the kind of person you'd want to journey with even if the destination was a nihilistic hell. His stories are peppered with amusing asides and deft observations, not just from him but his fellow travelers: "What a strangely consistent country this is," remarks his girlfriend about a Cambodian river that because of flooding, reverses its current twice a year. "Even the river lacks a clear sense of direction." Oddly, Dyer's narrative also loses its sense of direction in the final chapter, just as he reaches what he has described throughout...
MacFarquhar describes Verba as a “raconteur...
...asked me to say a few words in Italian," Ustinov recalls. "I reminded him I was Nero, who only spoke Latin." The story captures the wit and erudition for which Ustinov - who was knighted in 1990 for his accomplishments as an actor, director, playwright, opera-producer, historian, philosopher and raconteur-at-large - has long been celebrated...
...Betelnut, Lord is as much an attraction as the food. He's an exuberant raconteur who delights in overruling his guest's orders. For starters, Lord firmly suggests either the crab cakes mingled with kangaroo and served with nori or the tortillalike summer roll stuffed with scallops, shrimp and sesame sauce. And when my dinner companion chooses the blackened mackerel, Lord refuses to give it to him. "You'll be much happier with the soft-shell crab," he says as he walks away with the menus. Grudgingly, my tablemate later concurs that the soft-shell crabs with green papaya...
...writing, Bryson says, "makes people interested in the experience you've had, and that's harder than folks think." This, he is careful to point out, is not the same as being an interesting person. "I'm extremely boring company," he claims. "Everyone expects me to be a great raconteur, but I'm a terrible storyteller. And so are most of the travel writers I've met." Bryson has led a fittingly peripatetic life. He moved to England from his native Iowa in 1973 and, after a brief spell working as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital, began writing full...