Word: dialectical
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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John O'Hara's first two novels impressed critics for two reasons. They revealed his command of native dialect and his willingness to enter into the minds of recognizable U. S. types to see what made them tick. Thus, in Appointment in Samarra, he explored the consciousness of a Pennsylvania Cadillac dealer who committed suicide; in Butter field 8, the crossed-up life of a New York speakeasy girl who had better reasons for letting herself...
...property, his pity for the Irish peasantry and his opposition to Home Rule, his artistic bent and his fantastic taste in furnishing his country house, Clandeboye, which included everything from cannons to totem poles. These contradictions he treats with disarming irony, wit, charm of style. In his typically English dialect of delicate understatement Nephew Nicolson limns Lord Dufferin's "generosity of soul," his touching love for his mother (for whom he built an elaborate shrine which he called Helen's Tower), his extraordinary charm, his genius for winning colonies without battles. He gives, in short, a strong suggestion...
...gods. Modern Jews have espoused two diametrically opposed causes: 1) Radicalism (which promises Jews a society without racial prejudice) and 2) Zionism (which promises Jews a national home in Palestine). While leftist-minded Jewish composers tend to express themselves in the tuneless technicalities of modernism, or in the Negroid dialect of jazz, Zionist-minded Jewish composers seek a purely Jewish variety of concert music, color their symphonies and sonatas with the traditional chants of the ancient Hebrews...
...boil, in the peculiar dialect of Brooklyn, The Bronx and parts of Manhattan, is a "burl." It is only a coincidence, however, that the rare and curious burls from which the gaudiest veneers for furniture are made result from a tree disease somewhat similar to boils. Nobody knows what causes burls, as nobody knows what causes cancer. They form most often underground where the roots join the tree. Burl diggers notice a slight swelling of the trunk at the ground level, dig down, chop off the roots and lift out the burl. The surgery required for burls above ground...
...SCOTLAND-R. H. Bruce Lock-hart-Putnam ($3). In this nostalgic, slow-paced account of his athletic boyhood, Author Lockhart (British Agent) gives first place to relatives and Rugger, with interspersed laments on the decline of bagpipes, kilts, Scotch whiskey, dialect and nationalism, winds up with a stirring defense of schoolmasters. Concluded with this volume, Author Lockhart's autobiographical series adds little to modern letters, but makes an interesting example of Scotch frugality in living one's life twice over...