Word: balzac
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...long-winded story about theatrical life, the film is as crowded as the busiest Balzac novel with people, city noises, brawling and lovemaking (see BOOKS). The setting, too, is Balzacian: the sprawling plot tries to keep up with half a dozen leading characters as they move through 1848 Paris. But the film's makers, using their own script, lacked Balzac's gift for tying up dangling ends and giving a finished story some look of significance...
...BALZAC (404 pp.)-Stefan Zweig, translated by William & Dorothy Rose -Viking...
When Austrian-born Biographer Stefan Zweig committed suicide (together with his wife) in Brazil almost five years ago, he had been working on Balzac for a decade, referred to it as "the large Balzac" that was to become his magnum opus. Now published, his passionately sympathetic portrait of the prolific French novelist is clearly handicapped by the sudden death of its author...
...edited and somewhat rewritten by Zweig's friend Richard Friedenthal, it still exposes its incompleteness, especially in the sketchy final chapters. Balzac is the December choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which 13 years ago singled out Zweig's Marie Antoinette...
Escape in Passion, like its predecessors, is a novel with a vast and varied cast. Its 400-odd characters - including an orphan boy, an electrician, an absconding millionaire, an actress, a smattering of Cabinet ministers-have one notable advantage over Balzac's and Zola's 19th Century people: Romains' travel...