Word: authority
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...whole. Author de Lima's narrative offers more tricks than treats. She raises the question of artist v. society, love v. vocation, honor v. survival, but her hero is not big enough to embody these dilemmas. His conscience is not so much troubled as missing. Still, her book is a feast of the visual imagination. Herself the wife of a painter, she stipples Praise with vivid vignettes. And when it comes to dialogue, her ear is as good as her eye. Author de Lima raises a storm, all right, even if it is only a tempest in an espresso...
...sophisticated circus barker's spiel plus evangelistic free-enterprise fervor, shovelfuls of down-to-earth business details plus the bargaining excitement of a Turkish bazaar, a fictional cast of heroes, villains and gulls-and even a bit of suspense. If a million dollars is not forthcoming in the author's promised 20-year span, one has the publisher's semi-facetious word for it that the price of the book will be refunded...
...boggle is, among other things, the gurgle made by quicksand as it closes over its victim. Such febrile considerations flash through the boggled minds of readers as they sink out of sight in Author Wallach's pun-swampy prose. The man is popping with word-foolery. He interrupts his narrative-and a more interruptible narrative would be hard to find-to inform the reader that a tirade is "a sneak attack on a haberdashery," and a syndrome is "a large amphitheater where the ancient Romans used to sin." He dreams moodily of going to Canada and establishing a police...
...Stranded in Toledo With have missed a bet. Far more interesting might be a compilation of the Ten Best Bad Novels-books whose artistic flaws are mountainous but whose merits, like Loreleis on the rocks above, keep on luring readers. A place on such a list would go to Author Condon's second novel, an almost complete catalogue of humanity's disorders, including incest, dope addiction, war, politics, brainwashing and multiple murder. The book carries a superstructure of plot that would capsize Hawaii, and badly insufficient philosophical ballast. Yet Condon distributes his sour, malicious humor with such vigor...
Among the Renaissance characteristics are balance and symmetry, which Romeo and Juliet has in superabundance. An early member of the canon and only the author's second attempt at tragedy, the play is at times literarily self-conscious and structurally too obvious in its symmetrical balance. Every idea has its complement: love vs. hate, day vs. night, patience vs. impetuosity, chastity vs. bawdry, and so on. Every character has its foil: Romeo and Mercutio, Juliet and Roasline, Benvolio and Tybalt, Friar Laurence and the Nurse. If it is not a supreme achievement, it is still a great play...