Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...more important is the omnipresent hand of a born novelist, buoyantly bending and shaping each scene to his literary way, and successfully creating a single, superb, comic figure of the author himself. With a courageous measure of self-mockery, Mailer casts himself in the role of a black-humor antihero: a hard-drinking, self-important and snobbish dandy who, believing himself the star, is forever stumbling toward the camera, when all the time he is really only an extra, a bit player who will inevitably be cut out of the film...
...Mailer always returns to himself. With an "egotism of curious disproportions," he catalogues his breakfast menus, his cures for the common cancers, even the virtues of each of his four wives. Sometimes he is the little boy full of comic-strip fantasies about riding around in a red helicopter, taking on the whole might of the U.S. Air Force and of "corporation-land" by shooting paint at the enemy choppers. At other times he fancies himself an exiled princeling (though from what country defies the imagination...
...proved three years ago in the James Bond Dossier, Amis provides a reasonably healthy, if slightly pale, replica. It remains to be seen whether the trans planted heart will function smoothly (and profitably), or whether it will provoke rejection symptoms. The new Bond lacks much of the comic-book charm that connected so well when the camp craze was at its height a few years ago. He makes a halfhearted attempt to evolve Bond from a set of gangliac reactions to a more speculative character. Unfortunately, the technical gimmickry, which was essential, has been discarded-although not the fancy...
...texts are Mr. Mayer's and the excellent music was composed by Bradley Burg. In content, it is both the record of a day in Cambridge, from late morning rising til next morning's dawn, and a series of forays into political analysis, artistic exorcism, historical recreation, lyric and comic experiment. Informal in atmosphere, the action of White Sale is remarkable for the case and familiarity with which seemingly disparate ideas, styles, and techniques move together on its stage. These actors, who both take parts in individual sequences and retain strong identities of their own throughout, appear to be good...
...price of admission in itself. I will term Thomas Babe a gifted mimic, Susan Channing an actress of tremendous range, Dean Gitter the possessor of one of the most authoratitive stage presences about, Tommy Lee Jones an actor with a true gift for insightful readings, Stephen Kaplan a protean comic figure, and Marilyn Pitzele a remarkable dramatic and comic singer. Each term will fit the rest of the cast as well, and as may well be imagined, the permutations are incredible. I leave you to work out the details...