Among the best are W.D. Howell's Venetian Life (without doubt, the finest book ever written about what it is like to be a foreign resident in Italy), and Edmund Wilson's waspish Europe without Baedeker –a remarkable portrait of England, Italy and Greece during the final hours of World War II (inexcusably out of print since 1966).
It's a portrait without a face.
"But what comes out of it is not a book, but a portrait without a frame".
Mr. Bickerton's work also included lots of embarrassing and prosaic examples of his consumer habits, while Mr. Bevilacqua strains without irony to paint a portrait of the artist as neo-punk hipster.
This was eventually issued in all regions apart from Mercia, which issued coins without a ruler portrait, suggesting, in Sarah Foot's view, that any Mercian affection for a West Saxon king brought up among them quickly declined.
"The Aviator," I suppose, is Scorsese's "Citizen Kane," but it's a portrait made without Welles's malicious satirical spirit.
But still, today, I can't look at a portrait of Wallis Simpson without finding some beauty in it.
Constructed in the manner of Jean Stein and George Plimpton's "Edie," with blocks of quotations from friends and relatives alternating with excerpts from Mrs. Parish's journal, the book is a portrait of society without the John O'Hara elements: no drinking, no adultery, no bad behavior.
Her audacious expression is confounding: a portrait of a woman without shackles — or scruples.
Conversations behind closed doors yielded a portrait of a community, without severe violence, that nonetheless felt powerless and afraid.
