On Description

I came across this piece of physical description in Stephen Hunter’s review of the movie, “All The King’s Men.” I’ve always had trouble with physical description of people. This one seems first rate.

“For me, Penn's Willie Stark is spot-on, but he's a subspecies of tyrant. He's the small-man tyrant. Penn is short and stubby with a kind of crunched-up face liberated to aggression by a giant ax blade of a nose and rubbery, vulgar lips; with short arms and short, pudgy fingers and a pile of Brylcreemed hair on his head over white sidewalls, veins throbbing like the letter Y under his pale skin. He looks like a fireplug of pure hunger and want, particularly when he lets fly his stemwinders from the stump utterly shorn of self-consciousness.”