Word: bittersweetness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Walter Mitty is alive and well in the appealing shape of a young matron on Manhattan's Upper West Side. She is Margaret Reynolds, the decidedly sane housewife-heroine of Up the Sandbox, a fresh, beguiling, bittersweet novel that looks into those three old hats: men, marriage, motherhood...
...followed in Dolly's role by Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller and, finally, by Ethel Merman, who belted out the final hellos last week and then took the final curtain calls. "I feel sad and happy," said Ethel, "it's a bittersweet ending...
...could resist Jennifer Cavilleri, the Radcliffe girl, condemned on the first page to a tragic death, then, loving Bach and the Beatles right to the end, expiring in her husband's arms? Leaving Harvard Scion Oliver Barrett IV with nothing but a ticket to Paris and a handful of bittersweet memories?plus about a drillion dollars from the dad who forgives him for marrying a Rhode Island Italian, now that she is dead...
...play's overall success in its Boston production with the Stratford National Company of Canada must be attributed to a remarkable acting job by Hume Cronyn, just as Alex McGowan's tour de force "made" the show in London and on Broadway. Cronyn is superb, biting off bittersweet epithets, swivelling quickly, daintily crossing his legs on the Papal throne, as a long cigarette dangles from his fingers. Cronyn's determined effort to project nuance into Rolfe's fantasies generate an ironic tension. He makes Rolfe more interesting than the play might lead us to believe...
Singer's stories and novels are varied in scope and focus. The Magacian of Lublin is a bittersweet variation on the theme of the Wandering Jew; Satan in Goray deals with the orgiastic response to a false messiah in seventeenth-century Poland, while stories like "Short Friday" celebrate domesticity and the simple virtues: But perhaps Singer's masterpiece of short fiction, "Gimpel the Fool." provides the most tender display of his virtuoso talent. In a world which places a premium on wisdom, Singer's hero is the fool, the one who receives goat turds instead of sweets. The simpleton...