Word: clef
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...that Giovannetti is, or ever was, a spy. Nevertheless, the monsignor readily admits that Requiem for a Spy, which he describes as "part autobiographical" and "part political fantasy," is a roman à clef based on his long experience and his personal acquaintance with a number of spies he has known, if not always loved. "I knew all the spies in the U.N. organization itself, but they were not up to much," he says. "The big spies are in the various delegations. In any case the book is not based on any particular episode, and there is no real model...
...other since student days at U.C.L.A., are both now serving prison terms for their part in the Watergate coverup. Since Haldeman's new book, The Ends of Power, blames Nixon for both launching and covering up Watergate, TIME asked Ehrlichman, himself the author of the highly successful roman a clef, The Company, to review Haldeman's effort. Ehrlichman's critique...
...clash and carryings-on over Soap aside, television's instant-history movies have been the season's most hotly debated entertainment. When ABC let loose with its twelve-hour Watergate roman à clef, Washington: Behind Closed Doors, last fall, half the critics and columnists in the country attacked the mini-series for playing fast and loose with recent political fact. Then the same network aired a so-called docudrama, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, to even harsher criticism. Now NBC and CBS are getting ready to take their lumps. King, a six-hour miniseries consecrated...
When Saul Bellow wrote his roman a clef, Humboldt's Gift, even knowledgeable readers had trouble recalling the model for Von Humboldt Fleisher. The difficulty would not have occurred if Bellow's chief character had been based on Robert Lowell or John Berry man or Theodore Roethke. Yet, for these celebrated poets, Delmore Schwartz was once the front runner of their generation...
Annie Hall. Even though it's based on his real-life relationship with co-star Diane Keaton, Woody Allen's latest--and arguably best--film is far more than cinema a clef. Allen's sensitive, sometimes painfully realistic portrait of a failed love affair between a neurotic but lovable New York Jew and a flaky midwestern WASP marks a generally successful departure in thematic approach: "Annie Hall" goes much farther in exploring human relationships than any of Allen's previous films. Still, the best moments in the film are the deliberate send-ups in which Allen unleashes his scathing...