[Ads-l] from today's NYTimes

[George Thompson]

"[Charlie Sheen] said that during the period he “dazedly chose (or hired)
the companionship of unsavory and insipid types.”"
A review of a bad restaurant might say: the food here is either unsavory or
insipid.  But I suppose Sheen is offering these qualities as parallel, not
oppositional.  What are insipid companions that make it bad judgment to
associate with them, as much as with unsavory companions?

[from a book review]  Ms. Beard’s prose is never mandarin, yet she treats
her readers like peers.
"yet"?  Surely "and"?.  Mandarin (highfalutin, stilted) prose keeps we poor
readers at an awe-struck distance; her prose lets us feel at ease.

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

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