Word: compendia
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...Silk Parachute,” John McPhee’s latest anthology of essays, is already a relic. A slender addendum to McPhee’s two previous collections of personal essays and literary journalism, this book evokes a rapidly fading epoch in which compendia of previously published works (not to mention books in general) could still turn a profit. Indeed, “Silk Parachute” often feels as though it was rushed to press too quickly. The highlight of the book, “Spin Right and Shoot Left,” which examines the history...
...Compendia...
...referring to the arms directories published for prospective buyers by half a dozen national governments. (The U.S., where sales catalogues from Sears to the Whole Earth are practically national icons, has none.) The most elaborate are put out by Britain and France. Both distribute slick omnibus arms compendia, Britain every year since 1969, France biannually since 1967, that the world's wish-listing generals and defense ministers can flip through with the delight of boys at Christmas time. There are no order forms or suggested retail prices. But whether they prefer the grand, gilded and clothbound British Defence Equipment...
Three Plays from The Towneley Cycle. These may be the best things playing all month for those with a serious, and especially an academic, interest in theater. The Towneley Cycle is one of those compendia of medieval religious plays halfway between ritual and modern drama. This production is the outgrowth of David Staines's English 211 and represents one of the few attempts to bring performing drama within Harvard's academic orbit. The English department should sit up and take note. Two of the three plays that make up the program were translated into modern English by students...
With Harris as Cromwell, George C. Scott as Patton, and Rod Steiger forthcoming as Napoleon, movie audiences will soon have that "choose a tyrant for 99c" option used to sell biographies of Louis XIV and Stalin in the book section of the New York Times. As biographies become flabby compendia, so historical movies-with the notable exception of Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV -go up in factual pretension while they go down in quality. Darryl Zanuck in Tora! Tora! Tora! spent millions to reproduce historical fact, but sacrificed artistic coherence for lavish commercial packaging. Hughes' Cromwell also fails...