Word: corte
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There is no arguing about this message, or about Barthelme's delivery. After all these years of rehearsal, he ought to have his act together. "Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. Little green flies fill the air. Corées and Montezuma are holding hands; from time to time one of them disengages a hand to brush away a fly." No byline is needed; the spooky confluence of matter-of-fact observation (those green flies) and dreamlike lunacy (the handholding strollers) identify the paragraph as Barthelme...
...unmistakable, however, is often to be predictable. Barthelme seems to stage the same kind of illusion every time he writes. No, he does not write about Cortés and Montezuma in every story; in fact, he is not writing about them in the sketch quoted above. There is in fact no subject matter to his pieces. Characters and situations are used the way a hypnotist employs a pocket watch swinging at the end of a chain. It is the hypnosis that is important, not the swing of the watch. A short piece called The Party begins, "I went...
GORDON'S OLD PARTNER, Bud Cort, of Harold and Maude fame, stars as Max Brown in a Canadian production of Max Braithwaite's novel Why Shoot the Teacher? The film reportedly set all kinds of box-office records in Canada--it's set in Saskatchewan and was filmed in Alberta--and it's easy to see why. Like My Bodyguard, it emphasizes real people in real situations--a young schoolteacher in a barren Canadian farmers' town...
...Cort's Max, while as wide-eyed and clumsy as Buster Keaton, fails to add the vibrant punch that his mordant Harold could not escape. Nor does love interest Samantha Eggar provide anything more than good, solid acting...
...these parts--Narizzano's smooth camerawork, Cort's lurching educator, Eggar's rough-hewn farmer's wife, and the dozen kids who make up Max Brown's class--is a satisfying whole, not unlike My Brilliant Career. The settings are different, of course, and the heroine in search of a career is now a hero, but the tone of each film is the same: gritty, vivacious, and indomitable...