His tangled, archaeological surfaces, layered with paper, woodcuts and charred photographs, are mirrors of time itself.
The most fantastical of his stories, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," haunt us more than the neatly journalistic, mirror-of-their-time stories, like "May Day" and "The Rich Boy".
Seen in this light, Mr. Johnson is simply a mirror of his time.
Looking into the mirror of our time, I see a reflection of 1914, when sleepwalking Europeans, awake but not seeing, moved the world toward WWI, then WWII, and the rest of 20th century history as we know it.
But perhaps a book of the year should be a mirror of the times?
No Shakespeare play provides, for a British audience, a more perfect mirror of the times.
During my first weekend here, it wasn't only in "Richard III" that I found a distant mirror of present times.
Updike was clearly functioning as a mirror of his times when he had his characters go in fear of threatening black people and hippies, or nurse odd theories about women's sexuality.
"Maybe people think that life is about the red carpet, but we think it is time again for everyday fashion, not for the V.I.P.'s," Mr. Dolce said, while Mr. Gabbana stated that "fashion is the mirror of the times, and life is different now".
Hobbies remain a mirror of their times.
But fashion is, as they so often say, a mirror of the times.
