Word: cytherea
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Of Quaker descent, his preoccupation has always been with beautiful surfaces, in landscapes, women, old furniture, centuries. A symposium of critics last year voted him America's most important novelist. His works include Mountain Blood, Three Black Pennys, Java Head, The Happy End, Cytherea, The Bright Shawl...
...heroine is described as possessing the "composure of a cobra and the face of six or seven madonnas." This generosity in the matter of faces seems somewhat needless, for she could wreak enough havoc with one. Her actions are at times reminiscent of Cytherea. Thus: "Tony [a youth] drew Angela to him, murmuring huskily. Her eyes were rich with invitation and desire. She resisted him, not only with her white arms, but with all her will, crying softly: 'Don't, Tony! Oh don't, dear boy!' But she was a gardenia, soft and lush and pale...
...Cytherea. Not a very sincere or inspired attempt to capture the rapt flapper attention excited by tales of Joseph Hergesheimer's best seller. This is the least successful of the various Hergesheimer stories that have been hurled with some effect upon the screen. It seeks to reveal the spirit of the old pagan goddesses still inhabiting the modern society damsel - accomplishing this with gilded settings in Manhattan and Cuba, where the soul is so easily laid bare...
...best prose in the number is contained in the book reviews. All three are robustly and epigrammatically written, and reveal, with many an apt turn of phrase, high powers of impressionistic criticism. The caricature of Max Beerbohm is as successful as many of his own caricatures. The review of "Cytherea" is perhaps too conscious in its "joyous paganism" (the same may be said of the book, I understand), but the concluding remarks on the novel are sound, and the whole is well expressed...