Word: comptons
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...WORLDS AND THEIR WAYS (311 pp.) -I. Compton-Burnett-Knopf...
...novels of Britain's Ivy Compton-Burnett have received so much highbrow adulation that there is a growing suspicion that they must be unreadable. The suspicion has some foundation: when Elizabeth Bowen says that "Miss Compton-Burnett is always fundamentally truthful at the expense of realism," she is simply saying that many readers will never have the vaguest notion of what Compton-Burnett is being so truthful about...
...reason for this is that in all her twelve novels, Ivy Compton-Burnett has never tried to tell a convincing story. With her, any old melodrama (even including secret drawers, lost wills, fantastic skeletons in impeccable family closets) passes for plot; all Novelist Compton-Burnett needs is the chance to reveal what she is really interested in revealing-the vices, virtues and idiosyncrasies of human behavior. To this end, too, the people in her novels talk all the time but never talk naturally: unlike real people they always say just what they think, and mean just what they say; when...
Savagery Plus. Two Worlds and Their Ways is not Compton-Burnett's best; it does not, for instance, reach and hold the high and extraordinary level of its predecessor, Bullivant and the Lambs (TIME, July 19). It has many more tedious and barren stretches, but they are frequently relieved by Novelist Compton-Burnett's most characteristically brilliant qualities. There are flashes of darting spite ("I hope I am not disturbing you at your luncheon, Mrs. Cassidy." "Thank you, Miss James. It is so kind to cling to the hope") and devastating responses to thoughtless queries ("Why should...
...Karl T. Compton, the former president of MIT, Senator Ralph E. Flanders (R) of Vermont are among the supporters of American Research and Development...