Word: reader
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...words, Maurice Sendak manages to evoke a mythic land peopled by the familiar (a mother and two daughters) and the wholly exotic (goblins and dream-scapes), where natural law, like the reader, is held in suspense. The time is the past indefinite; costumes indicate the 19th century, but there are references to the 1930s, and at one time Mozart can be seen working at a hammerklavier. Ida, the oldest girl, is given charge of her baby sister. When she grows inattentive, faceless creatures steal in and exchange the child for a simulacrum made of ice. Frantic, Ida climbs backward...
What makes Travis McGee books so very good is that MacDonald talks to the reader like an old friend--straight. He tells you what's on his mind, and you sense that if you find the conversation dull or commonplace, that is your own fault...
When McGee isn't talking to the reader, he is out talking to people. He doesn't precisely solve crimes, but finds them out by talking to a number of people, each of whom has already solved a small piece of the puzzle for himself. McGee's course is to collect all these smaller solutions and assemble them, fitting the pieces into a triumphant comprehension of crime and evil...
...write about the Old World seems even riskier. An émigré issues a warning that is to echo down to the days of Philip Roth: "The scribblers here try to persuade the reader that the shtetl was a paradise full of saints. So comes along someone from the very place and he says 'stuff and nonsense!' They'll excommunicate you here, but don't be alarmed...
Media executives are getting nervous. ABC's New York studio fired five staff members, accusing them of using bogus questions on viewer-participation programs-earlier, an unlikely punishment for such an offense. It is hard enough as it is for a newspaper reader or television watcher to tell fact from fiction. On television, where the ability to create plausible fiction has run low, writers of "docudramas" put words never spoken by Churchill or Truman into their mouths. The confusion is compounded when the public is assured it is getting authentic words mouthed by actors...