Word: author
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...critics. The scholars are basically interested in establishing accurate texts, the critics in plumbing nuances of characterization, plot and symbol. The critics sometimes decry the scholars as pedants with bibliomania, while the scholars dismiss the critics as dilettantes with an unprofessional lack of interest in discovering what an author really wrote. In a pair of scathing articles for the New York Review of Books, Critic Edmund Wilson recently added his eminent voice to the quarrel. He suggested that a number of leading literary experts are now engaged in a pointless exercise in scholarship that amounts to an outrageous boondoggle...
While Annabel decides how to deal with her career and with Billy, the author toys with her conscience like a sadistic cat. Spark's portrayal of human venality is ruthless. First, Annabel calls a press conference-where she is surrounded by weeping neighbors-to deny that her husband intended suicide in the first place. Like a small child, she tries out little lies and daydreams, but she reassures no one but herself that the truth can be contained. The author observes it all, and from the crudest angle...
What saves the book from being mere female savagery is Spark's balancing sensitivity to naked human need. Annabel debases herself in a desperate attempt to protect her blameless, hardworking existence. Without sentimentality, the author pities Annabel; the reader can laugh at her but cannot side against...
...Trout, Bowen's eighth novel, is typical of her writing and unlike anything else being published today. Once more the author concerns herself with the domination of the strong by the weak; "they have such incredible staying power," one character laments. Eva is the formless, feckless person who flouts the schemes and designs of subtler minds. At 25, she is an heiress. Her mother died in a plane crash; her father, a homosexual tycoon, was a suicide. Her guardian was her father's partner in business and in bed. He alternately tries to manipulate her for her money...
Expensive People, the middle volume of a trilogy that began with A Garden of Earthly Delights, spooks the suburban-castle country of the upper middle class. Author Oates has but one message in her demonic little tale: behind the suburban facade lie corruption and madness. To hear her tell it, American husbands and wives are nice clean-cut vampires planting stakes in each other's hearts. And there is always the monster in the playroom...