The men stood on a sidewalk on Main Street along with thousands of other spectators, admiring an endless stream of motorcycles and their riders cruising by in raucous procession.
"There's a lot about masturbation here – as much an age of coming as a coming of age novel", noted an equally admiring Julie Burchill in the Spectator: "She writes with breathtaking brio, like a great professional hoofer who has been toe-tapping since tot-hood but has never grown tired of performing: very much a 'Ta-da!
A throng of curious spectators admired the car's turquoise digital dashboard and its plush interior.
Even while competing as a heel, however, Hanson and Hawk were admired by many spectators and had a fan club devoted to them.
Richard Davenport-Hines in the Spectator was also admiring: "The book relies on stylish intelligence and cool calm to accomplish its mastery … Barnes endorses Penelope Fitzgerald's remark that 'you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings whom you think are sadly mistaken'".
As he walked through the streets to join other spectators in his party, he was greeted with cheers and calls of "Vive le Ministre!" ("Long live the Minister!") from admiring onlookers.
In both cases the eager spectators simultaneously admire the artifice and pretend it isn't there, allowing themselves to believe that those people down in the ring or up on the screen are truly inflicting pain on one another.
In time, the rural spectators, who admired the marionette theatre's realism and novelty, abandoned it for cinema; fortunately, they were replaced by a smaller, avant-garde audience that prized its artifice and antique patina.
Admiring Hillary Clinton?
And yet the dispassionate spectator can admire the film's many accomplished formal elements, beginning with the screenplay derived from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel and written by a team that included Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf and at least a dozen other uncredited contributors.
