Word: authored
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crude presentation of theme is as irritating as the superficial characterization of Bogard. The author hammers at what he considers the problem of our generation: we lack conviction or concern enough to take a stand on any significant issue. The interview between Bogard and the dean forms a superfluous gift-wrapped packaging of the book's thesis. The dean declares that Bogard's is the "Indifferent" Generation...
While sexual scheming takes up a disproportionate share of The Law, Author Vailland manages to use it chiefly to accent the greed, misery and lust for power that fill his febrile small-town world. The moral of The Law is that the strong and ruthless will crush the weak and righteous almost every time-and Author Vailland has the knack of making their victory seem inevitable...
This vision helps to illustrate Author Kerouac's unhappy faculty for confusing freedom with irresponsibility, for abusing the Zen Buddhist idea of the inseparability of good and evil by using it as an excuse for self-indulgence. Kerouac's protest against the urban work life (which he once called "the midtown sillies world") and the suburban home life of the U.S. middle class ("all that dumb white machinery in the kitchen") is trenchant but scarce!" new. And Kerouac's cult of "spontaneous writing" makes his pages at least as sloppy as they are sprightly...
...less pretty In The Law (a Book of the Month Club selection and 1957 winner of France's famed Prix Goncourt), he coolly examines a hand-picked cast of Manacoreans and discovers without surprise that their lives are governed by poverty, cynicism and naked power. A sometime Communist Author Vailland searches out what suits his ideological intent, but The Law also happens to be full of authentic color and pulses steadily with passions that are impervious to change...
...Although Author Vailland talks eloquently about the downtrodden, most of the villagers' discontent seems to be sexual rather than political or economic At the big house on Don Cesare's estate, a succulent teenage virgin named Marietta is fighting off the panting assault of Tonio, her brother-in-law. Most men want Marietta on sight, and no small part of the town's everlasting gossip is devoted to estimating the chances of the likeliest males. Landlord Don Cesare himself, now 74, is still virile and, by what seemed to him natural right, he has always taken...