Word: dead
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Humanized Mechanization. The only U.S. artist to rival Peale's mastery of still life was an Irishman named William M. Harnett. As sickly as Peale, Harnett was also dirt-poor to start with, took to painting still lifes because he could not afford live models. He made his dead models-rabbits, books, fruit, paper money-so convincing that guards were once posted to protect his canvases from clutching gallerygoers...
Lewis' new-found Christianity also introduced him to Charles Williams, the author he says has influenced his writing more than any other, living or dead. Williams was a scholarly, self-educated, Cockney-accented Londoner who died last year, leaving an astonishing assortment of essays, poetry and fiction that delighted a small circle of Christian intellectuals. His first novel, War in Heaven, told of a cops-&-robbers chase through modern England which followed when somebody turned up with the Holy Grail. The Williams books inspired Lewis to write a trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) dealing...
...best friends have been invited even to tea at his twelve-room house in suburban Headington (as a Fellow of Magdalen, he has rooms in the college as well). Lewis sometimes refers vaguely to living with his "old mother," though his friends know that she has been dead since his childhood. One persistent rumor identifies the "mother" as a Mrs. Moore, mother of a friend killed in World War I, whom Lewis invited to keep house for him and who is pictured as an aged, bad-tempered old party. And there are said to be other dependents in the house...
...quite understands how they have been betrayed. The seraphically charming Pasquale dwindles into a corrupted, potential criminal. The stolid Giuseppe grows into a grave embodiment of vengeance. Deceit, bewilderment, loss of affection and of faith drive them to the edge of sanity. Finally Pasquale kills his friend. Over the dead body, he first begins to realize what he has done to his friend and to himself-and a little of what has been done to both of them...
This is all so very nice, in fact, that Mother is a trifle weak on dramatic interest. Audience tears are jerked-or jerked at, anyhow-on behalf of the dear, dead days of the two-a-day. More tears are tried for when the two little girls, lonely for their touring parents, turn up for Christmas and are entertained by the whole troupe. Some tension develops when the older daughter (Mona Freeman) falls in love with an adolescent socialite and becomes embarrassed about her cheerfully gaudy parents. But Father & Mother are so thoroughly kind and understanding that no harm...