Word: connections
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hard to connect the author of this passage with the soft-spoken, philosophical man who came to Boston last week. Fast looks on the hardships of his life with a curiously detached perspective, pointing out very reasonably that they were important to his writing. In the Communist Party Fast once found an inspiring movement and struggle, a brave, historic fight for freedom. Even when he entered prison he went as a writer, a man whose purpose was to build up a store of experience. He told his wife at the time that it would be a shame for a writer...
Courses in art and music, such as "The Painter's Eye," or "Forms of the Symphony," also will fall into this category, he said. The Faculty may also offer courses that connect literature and the arts in a social or historical contest, he added...
There are, however, some humorous numbers which do more than amuse. "Indecision" is a fifties satire with the show's best staging and a song that's got, you know, a beat. It is a song about adolescent anxiety that helps connect a preceding piece on children with later numbers about more permanent relationships. "Albatross Ramble" floats from comedy to tragedy and back as it examines the burdens that life dumps in our laps...
PROTECTION IS NOT just the name of the game in prison. It is the game, period. Who will kill for you, who won't squeal to the guards on you, who will connect you to the "lines" that fetch in cash and drugs from the outside. Nothing else much matters. All the other undercurrents of prison life feed into this network of domination--the meals, the exchanges with guards, the vocational training programs. Every activity provides a chance to jockey for influence. Every bit of slang becomes a code-word. Every move somehow reflects on the prison hierarchy...
...Gilliam finds it impossible to sustain, let alone develop anything like a consistent comic tone. In the end, the director is mostly making dour social commentary on the society he invented. He is never able to connect it either with our own or with the historical period that apparently inspired...