Word: curtal
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Dates: during 1962-1962
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Best of all. he was finally freed of the terror of Curtal's malicious...
Thunderous Picnic. The death ended a literary vendetta as implacable as any feud in the Kentucky hills. Tall, handsome Stanhope and rude, arrogant Curtal spent a lifetime competing for women, fame, friends, disciples and the minds of men. Atheist, lecher and revolutionary...
...Curtal had been an "unquenchable noise'' ranting against society with books as poorly argued as they were eloquent. With an egotist's insight into the vanities of other men, he had jeered at Stanhope as "the lonest lago, who kept his finger wet to catch the faintest wind of change"-a verbal wound that still bled after 40 years...
...Where Curtal was "like thunder at a Dicnic," Stanhope resembled high tea under the vicar's elms. Born into the Establishment and determined to stay there, Stanhope found the leisure to write poetry and critical appreciations of Corneille by marrying wealthy Adelaide ("A good wife. An invaluable partner. Such a relief when she died"). Stanhope was not without weapons: his unflappable poise was buttressed by arctic sarcasm that could condescend to Curtal as the "idol of mediocrity" who picked up other men's ideas as a robin does crumbs...
Angry Bastard. Unruffled, and showing no scars. Stanhope is prepared to play the game by mouthing conventional praise of the dead Curtal on a BBC memorial program. But he is not prepared for Curtal's illegitimate son, an angry young man who is writing his father's biography and comes to probe the old antagonism. Curtal died, his son tells Stanhope, by laughing himself into a fatal hemorrhage while mimicking Stanhope's mandarin manner. The son's brutal questions lead Stanhope back into a past as dangerous as a minefield, where every step triggers explosive insights...