Even Runyon has about as much to do with the history of Times Square as P. G. Wodehouse does with the history of Mayfair: his subject is language, not place, and in all of Runyon's stories it would be hard to find a single set-piece description of Times Square, a single bulb on a single sign.
Chick-lit aspects of the book exasperate: party-piece descriptions of frocks and dinners; her nervous interior life; her remark that the cost of a horse she proposes to buy is equal to a Hermès Kelly bag, more useful to her metropolitan existence.
"A considerably drunk Mr. Rogers is slated to project real-time images of himself and another performer via a live video feed during the piece," a description says, "creating a violently noisy and chaotic sense of disorder".
The piece's description clarifies the urban development metaphor: .
The set pieces of description in the English & American 19th century novel correspond to the primacy of landscape in English painting.
The show I saw began with a startling display of avant-garde belly-dancing, courtesy of Anokha Coxe, before moving on to an immensely silly piece of description-defying crockery-smashing dance poetry centred around Cinderella's incarceration on a space station.
(Warning: This piece contains descriptions and pictures which some readers may find upsetting).
Most mahākāvyas display such set pieces as descriptions of cities, oceans, mountains, the seasons, the rising of the sun and moon, games, festivals, weddings, embassies, councils, war, and triumph.
FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENT'S piece about Chungking; description of the city, population, and life there.
A Footloose Correspondents piece from Paraguay; description of Asuncion, the capital.
One of the saddest parts of your piece is your description of the University of Abidjan turning out thousands of graduates with absolutely no prospect of employment.
