Word: boudoirs
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Beat Keats. In a whimsical but nonetheless pointed peroration, famed Cossack Novelist Mikhail (And Quiet Flows the Don) Sholokhov wryly contrasted the obscure existence led by talented young poets in the provinces with the "triumphs of our currently fashionable boudoir poets." Neatly exploiting peasant resentment of city slickers, Sholokhov blamed the "backwardness" of Red letters on the fact that the great majority of writers live in big cities, thus have "only superficial knowledge of quickly flowing and changing reality." In their "impossibly narrow trousers and absurdly broad-shouldered jackets," he scoffed, they are interested only in showing...
...narrator is Georg von Geyrenhoff, a civil servant retired in early middle age who, from the vantage point of the 1950s, sets down the book's events in reminiscence. The book peers into boudoir and bar, smart rendezvous and thieves' kitchen, Vienna woods and Vienna sewers, museums, palaces, and slums. There are political riots, murder, sadism, Lesbianism, and varieties of amorous intrigue; but Von Doderer's temperament triumphs over passion and violence to give the book a placid, mellow tone. In a series of tableaux vivants, Von Doderer has captured a moment of history, a few years...
...Mayou. the Troubetzkoys' cook, maitre d'hōtel and two royal poodles watched a Belgian bicycle race on the television set in the servants' quarters; they were unaware of the agile figure who scaled the Villa's facade, tiptoed into Princess Marcia's boudoir, tiptoed out with $14,000 in gems. Not that anyone cared. Said the prince the next day: "Such things do happen, you know. At least now I know what to buy my wife for her next birthday...
...year-old bridegroom was already dreaming of cutting a swath through battlefield and boudoir. The 14-year-old bride thought only of venerating church, husband and home. On April 11, 1774, as arranged by two of France's first families, Gilbert Motier de La Fayette married Adrienne d'Ayen. The bride had barely left the altar when she was forced to begin a lifelong struggle to preserve her marriage to the soldier who became a hero of the American Revolution, a prime mover of the French Revolution, and a roving gallant who collected mistresses like medals...
...much too good to be interesting for 482 pages. But Old Master Maurois, 76, wisely lets La Fayette dominate great stretches of the book, just as he dominated much of Adrienne's life. The result is not only a glimpse of history as seen from a much neglected boudoir, but a study of matrimony in an age when marriage was sealed by God or society (depending on one's religious feelings) but had very little to do with love...