The spareness, learned in his youth from the poet Louis Bouilhet, is still there – as in the opening of "Hautot & Son" (1889), where, as Sean O'Faolain writes, "the scene is brilliantly and swiftly painted, with three lines for the countryside and six for the sportsmen" – but the stories' scope helps avoid the glibness that can mar his shorter work.
What is unusual this time is that the contest of personalities has been unmarked by the usual character assassination, innuendo and glibness.
And his weapon was words, for he had an Irishman's astonishing gift of the gab, glibness he called it, that never failed him.
But glibness and charm will not be enough to lead a party as disunited as the Tories.
A speedy choice of cheese at a colossal supermarket display may not be the perfect one, but it does leave more time for enjoying it afterwards.Ms Salecl's exotic intellectual pedigree bears the unmistakable stamp of her native Slovenia, mixing the obscurity of Lacanian psychoanalysis with the glibness of the new left.
Contrary to the glibness with which some proponents advocate it, government control of big banks is not a quick and painless solution to the banking mess.
Some of those present criticised the glibness with which some motor sport parties had addressed matters in Bahrain, most notably the plight of the jailed Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who began a hunger strike two months ago after being jailed for life for his role in last year's pro-democracy protests.
The towelling down comes between bouts of Key's minimal and literally throwaway poems that teeter between glibness and near tenderness: "I wrote to my brother to ask if I could borrow his fleece... ...... begins one.
A revealing series of interviews with 17 fraudsters and corrupt officials has shown there are a wide range of paths to corruption, from naked greed to grooming, but perpetrators tend to share a capacity for impulsiveness, glibness and a heightened ability to manipulate and deceive to get what they want.
Jones is, at first glance, an engaging, restless character with a capacity for glibness and politically driven compromise.
The other brother, Seth, a frustrated media guy, is played by Alex Karpovsky, an experienced actor, and his comically discursive and sarcastic ease before the camera translates to a worldly glibness and a slick arrogance that serves as a definitive irritant to their father's gruff bonhomie and his brother's clumsily involuted neediness.
