Word: alonzo
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DREAMS AND HALLUCINATIONS defy common sense yet intermingle with it like honeysuckle gradually choking its host plant. Althea bridges the gap between fantasy and reality. J.M. Alonzo's third novel is a brilliantly successful suspension of the reader's belief, a literary Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in which time, space and motivation convolute and distort one another so that one is both enmeshed and detached. Acid for the temperate...
Despite the author's attempts to define degrees of normality, there is no fixed moral code to which Muldoon can adhere. That, of course, is the quintessential dilemma of the thoughtful. What saves this book from the pseudo-philosophical platitudes such a theme might have spawned, however, is Alonzo's sense of the humorous and the bizarre, even in the midst of deadly sincerity. There may be moments when he speculates with great profundity and great tedium about every slimydeep secret in Muldoon's self-absorbed soul. Yet there is something appealing about a man who defines his condition thus...
There are shades of Thomas Hardy in the book's cinematic evocation of background and its psychological portrait painting. But, although Alonzo's mysticism may stupefy one at times, his overall tone is seldom as professorial as Hardy's can be. Alonzo's writing approaches a Dadaesque neo-anarchism of spirit while using the vocabulary of surrealism. And these diverse elements, surprisingly, complement each other...
...ghost of one of Alonzo Stagg's old foes?" I wondered, somewhat startled. I slapped myself on the side of the head. It was only Dave Mankin, who lived down the hall...
...conveying the ambience of Los Angeles before the war-sun-kissed, seedy and easy. The city was a central metaphor for Chandler, and it is brought alive here by Polanski and his collaborators, Production Designer Richard Sylbert and Costume Designer Anthea Sylbert. The film was photographed by John Alonzo in subdued, warm hues that give the effect of time and distance without pickling everything in soft-focus nostalgia. Chinatown suggests a metaphorical history of Los Angeles. "Six suburbs in search of a city," was the joking description of L.A. during the '30s, and Gittis' raveling of the mystery...