Word: comptons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MOTHER & SON (256 pp.)-/. Compton-Burnett-Messner...
...explain the thousands of books that come out every year?" asks a character in Mother & Son. The reply: "I do not explain them. There seems to me to be no explanation." The same answer might apply to questions about the works of veteran Novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett. What explanation is there for an author who has produced, at almost regular two-year intervals, a string of novels that have all much the same title (e.g., Pastors & Masters; Elders & Betters; Brothers & Sisters'), are about much the same people living in much the same house at much the same period (turn...
...Author Compton-Burnett has used the same revealing piece of wood off and on for 20 years, sometimes broken in a desk, sometimes built into a locked drawer-though once, admittedly, it was widened and made into a bridge over a ravine: the result was nearly neck-breaking. The nearest equivalent to this slice of timber is the distaff which the Greeks put in the hands of the Fates-and man's fate, in the Greek sense, is in fact the essential clue to the mystery of Author Compton-Burnett's long (15) line of novels...
...people refuse to accept this fact: they struggle to release themselves by trying to make their lives different from what they are fated to be. This struggle, enacted with Greek gravity and formality, is invariably the theme of a Compton-Burnett novel. The skill she exhibits in playing witty and tragic variations on it explains why her fans agree with Critic...
...HARVEY LOVE: April 23, M.I.T., Syracuse, Boston University; April 30, Compton Cup-Princeton, M.I.T., and Wisconsin; May 7, Adams Cup-Pennsylvania, Navy; May 14, Eastern Sprints at Washington, D.C.; June 17, Yale at New London...