Search Details

Word: countesses (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first (reverse)


Usage:

...Sign of Taurus, by William Fifield. A curious novel in which the astrological notions of an old Polish countess are mixed with exuberant descriptions of Mexico's sights and sounds; the result, happily, is a triumph of Mexico over metaphysics...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: CINEMA: Time Listings, may 16, 1960 | 5/16/1960 | See Source »

...after watching a blowsy clairvoyant telling fortunes in a Mexican cave, the countess receives a suggestion that both repels and attracts her. With her own fortunes sadly reversed, why not ply the fortunetelling trade herself...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Mexico & Metaphysics | 5/9/1960 | See Source »

...Countess Potolska sits in the sun-dazed plazas of Mexico, but her eyes blindly stare at aristocratic Polish drawing rooms, the image of Pilsudski, and her 20-year-old son standing in the streets of Warsaw in grim defiance of Nazi soldiery. Hawk-eyed and hawk-beaked, the countess is a Polish Jewess and a refugee, one of the world's involuntary tourists whose heaviest luggage is memory...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Mexico & Metaphysics | 5/9/1960 | See Source »

...this has the makings of the good gay farce that Novelist Fifield has chosen not to write. As the crystal ball clouds, the plot turns metaphysical. The countess half-believes in contact with a psychic realm that goes far beyond trickery or even telepathy. At a table-rapping seance, the countess herself is taken aback when her dead son's voice materializes. Finally, her crystal ball reveals tragedy in a bull ring, and a picador is killed...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Mexico & Metaphysics | 5/9/1960 | See Source »

While only a confirmed horoscope addict will find all this fully convincing, any reader will be impressed by Author Fifield's rendering of the trancelike intensity with which the countess' conscious mind pearl-dives into her unconscious. Author Fifield speculates intriguingly on religious and metaphysical questions. Does the ability to foretell a future event presuppose predestination? Are times past, present and future coeval? These questions are more fully developed than the novel's characters, who seem to exist like cards in a deck, merely to take plot tricks...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Mexico & Metaphysics | 5/9/1960 | See Source »

Previous | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | Next