Word: duncan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...GREAT (703 pp.)-Thomas W. Duncan-Lipplncotf...
...Thomas Duncan, a down & out ex-Harvard man, has written a rags-to-riches story, and as a result is about to enjoy a rags-to-riches life himself. His novel is the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for September (touted by Book Selector John P. Marquand as "head & shoulders . . . above any fiction [we] have examined this year"). It has already been peddled to Hollywood...
...eared, sardonic lowan of 42, Harvard cum laude Author Duncan spent ten years on Gus the Great and was nearly broke much of the time. An itinerant writer, teacher and Chautauqua actor, he is the author of three previous novels, all poor sellers. He retired to a trailer to finish Gus the Great, wandering through the West and Southwest. When the money ran low, Duncan hacked out short stories on a 1924 Corona; his wife, Actea, took a secretarial job. The Duncans' first purchase with their new riches: a shiny new Chrysler convertible...
From then on, Author Duncan's ragtag, bobtail characters resemble Betty MacDonald's farmers, except that his chickens lay golden eggs. In the tinseled, brutal world of prancing ponies and pickpockets, Gus acquires money and mistresses. He sells the pickpocket privilege in the show, trims his partner, boosts his own name into stud-horse type. "When business was high the money rolled in so fast there was no time to sort it, so [it was] shoved into a bushel basket. . . . Gus enjoyed picking up the basket and feasting his gaze on that green currency. Sometimes he plunged...
...Said Baritone Frank Rogier, who sang the role of Seducer Tarquinius: "Any time you sound in tune with the orchestra, you're off. So you go in the other direction." But Britten's insistent, subtle use of rhythmic and dissonant backgrounds put a wallop into Librettist Ronald Duncan's seething play. The opera opens with a rousing drinking and singing bout in the tent of Roman Generals Junius and Collatinus, with Tarquinius, the Etruscan prince who "treats the proud city [Rome] as if it were his whore." It closes with an anticlimactic epilogue after Lucretia...