The columnist could deride a singer, denigrate a painter and excoriate a director in the same elegant paragraph. (deride: mock, ridicule, scoff at; denigrate: disparage, belittle, malign; excoriate: condemn, castigate, denounce) His readers loved derision. (derision: ridicule, mockery, scorn) His new target, a mediocre one-act play, deserved criticism, but to eviscerate a school production for its mediocrity seemed a poor use of his page. (mediocre: middling, average, ordinary; eviscerate: demolish, savage, tear apart; mediocrity: ordinariness, averageness, middling quality)
His first draft was all scorn. (scorn: contempt, disdain, derision) His second was anodyne and said nothing. (anodyne: inoffensive, bland, soothing) Some writers would deprecate his change of heart as cowardice. (deprecate: disparage, belittle, disapprove of) Others would deplore his first impulse. (deplore: lament, regret, decry) He put both drafts away and asked himself which moment he had actually remembered.
A girl playing a porter had waited to put down a suitcase until the widow offered her a chair. That choice changed the scene. The critic described it precisely. His shortest review elicited his longest mail, including a letter from a porter who recognized herself.