In a few places, Marrin's efforts to enliven his already lively material tip over into melodrama.
The book's liveliest material comes from closer to Fishman's Chicago home, from Rockford, Ill., an industrial town once known as "the screw capital of the world".
The former may have been based on a death mask of its eponymous Florentine politician, but no livelier material object exists.
On the other hand, the CBS network needs lively, telegenic material to satisfy its sponsors.
Implicitly the lively beings of material creation are gathered here to bask in the beneficence of their cosmic overlord.
He recovered, and the two have since recorded their first album together in nearly thirty years, "Common Ground," a lively reimagining of material recorded by Big Bill Broonzy.
"He was a very lively reader of material, and had not made up his mind ahead of time about anything," said the poet and translator Richard Howard, a frequent contributor.
Ms. Kendall's synthesis of varied materials is brisk and lively, infused with musings on gender, the mysteries of individual artists and the larger relationship of ballet to shifting political structures.
So he reused the "A" material, the lively repartee that had clicked, the nanas in the morning.
The six actors onstage all exude a lively passion for the material that turns them into singing, dancing, rapping space heaters.
