Word: epical
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...author, a Jew, was evidently in a sweat of fervor when he wrote this novel. He cries out in his preface: "Then, in God's name, let us tell wiser, broader, deeper stories- stories with morals more significant and rich. . . . Let us recover, if possible, something of an epic note. To do that there is no need of high-flown words or violent actions. Only a constant sense of the streaming generations, of the processes of historic change, of the true character of man's magnificent and tragic adventure between earth...
Prohibition, the curse of America; Prohibition, the blessing of the age; and now, Prohibition, the subject of an epic by the talented M. Pillionel, who promises to turn the shafts of his Gallic wit on this topic in the very near future...
...brought up in the American atmosphere of W. C. T. U. tent meetings, Carrie Nation, and soda pop. A mere St. George-and-the-dragon plot would be trite, unless handled in a novel manner. On second thought, it seems that the choice of the epic form has not all the advantages of some other methods of treatment. The French epic has been dormant since Voltaire's Henriade; and the American epic is still unborn; this leaves the opera as the logical form for such a subject. Here, as nowhere else, could the whole breadth and depth of Prohibition...
...Pillionnel, instructor in the French Department, is soon to issue a volume of poetry entitled "Poemes D'Amerique", which is based on his ten year's stay in this country. The volume will contain a variety of short spontaneous lyrics, and a long epic on the question of prohibition. The chief interest of the epic lies in M. Pillionnel's novel means of presentation, for he has combined the advantage of his French viewpoint with a keen sense of humor to portray prohibition as a saint fighting the evils of liquor after their long sway in pre-prohibition days...
...worked hard in a packing plant. Mariana grew up to marry a bartender who was also a bad character; when she left him, she got a job at $8 a week singing in sawdust floored saloons. From that point her story is merely the brief, trite, magnificent U. S. epic of success. Someone who watched her dancing detected a charm that had nothing in common with Pavlova's grace, or with the sweeping symmetry of Isadora Duncan, or with the stereotyped but enticing flections practised now on musical comedy stages by the Duncan Sisters. When Mariana Michelsky sang...