Word: agente
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thanks to these findings, the body was identified as that of Major William V. Holohan, 40, the OSS agent who had mysteriously disappeared during a mission far behind the enemy lines in December 1944.* What fascinated Pathologist Lentino, as he now reports in the A.M.A. Journal, was the amazing state of preservation of the internal organs. As his trained eye looked at the organs, though they were six years dead, it was simple for him to identify instantly the stomach and heart, liver and spleen. But when he took specimens of them for laboratory examination, the microscope showed that...
...coldly indifferent organization with life-and-death powers over the people. Directed by the Supervisor, its countless computers are crammed with data that can be fused into terrible, final judgments by the flick of a switch. And The Agency is never wrong. Thomas of the title is a district agent of The Agency, hated by the people of his district, and returning each night to a termagant wife and a supercilious daughter. But for two days every year Thomas is transformed into that classic figure of irreverence, a clown...
...tenuously conceived books that can go fatally wrong anywhere after the first page. This one stays right all the way, and ends as one of the most satisfying novels of the year. For Thomas is both a symbol of common humanity and an intensely human individual. Ten years before, Agent Thomas first dressed as a clown for the masquerade that was part of the Holiday. For the first time in years he had fun and added to the fun of others. Thus he discovered the real Thomas, the human being obscured by the forbidding facade of the soulless Agency...
...even his wife knows of his annual release from the horrors of his job and the drabness of his life. For those two days every year he becomes simply Clown, a living legend, cherished by the very people who hate Agent Thomas. "His costume was human frailty, human helplessness . . . His comedy was misfortune, and his endearing grace the patience and dignity with which he survived an existence of interlinked catastrophes." As Clown, Thomas learns the thrill of being loved. In return, "he gave his life away, as much as he could...
Then by accident his identity is discovered. He is persecuted by the people, who believe that Agent Thomas must be an imposter pretending to be Clown. He is persecuted by The Agency for being Clown. In scenes that strongly recall the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, Thomas is first brought to despair and then raised to ecstasy. Through a neat twist of his plot, Novelist Brebner turns the tables on The Agency and restores Thomas to his rightful place. The happy ending-inconceivable in Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Castle-is in happy accord with the love...