An authorless national author tour “doesn’t seem to me to have been done before,” said Constance Sayre, a principal in the Manhattan publishing consulting firm Market Partners International.

The strongest link to the State, however, occurs with quangos, (quasi-NGOs), and the many umbrella groups that also thrive on State support. Many of the new parties realized after their Sturm und Drang years that they still needed regular contacts with the 'civil' world and that their civilian support base had been seriously eroded.

The impasto surfaces — skittering, superimposed grids and crosshatchings with highly sophisticated interplays of color and rhythm — are so lush and richly textured that you want to run barefoot through them.

In other words, I don't fantasize about having a ponyboy brought over to me and being bred with him. That hasn't come into the fantasies...