Word: fictional
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...FICTION 1. The Salzburg Connection, Maclnnes (2 last week) 2. Portnoy's Complaint, Roth (1) 3. Airport, Hailey (3) 4. A Small Town in Germany, le Carré (4) 5. Force 10 from Navarone, MacLean (5) 6. Preserve and Protect, Drury (7) 7. The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn (9) 8. A World of Profit, Auchincloss (8) 9. The Hurricane Years, Hawley 10. The Voyeur, Sutton...
...imagines Vidal pressing these occasional pieces into hard covers, pronouncing them a book, then hurrying back to the new novel. The irony is that, like Norman Mailer and James Baldwin among others, Vidal is more "creative" at nonfiction than fiction. The tart, slight, often exquisite perceptions in this book-concentrated as sour fruit drops-are really his forte...
There are those who see the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII as an erosion of the ancient rock of St. Peter, and those who see it as nothing less than a revival of all Christendom. It was likely that sooner or later these conflicting views would be explored in fiction; it is only strange that the first credible and moving novelistic exposition of the crisis of faith among clergy and laity that followed Vatican II should come out of Australia...
...there is anybody in detective fiction remotely comparable to England's Sherlock Holmes, it is Rex Stout's corpulent genius, Nero Wolfe. Like Holmes, Wolfe is coolly intellectual, fanatically thorough and precise, brilliantly epigrammatic; he is also a crotchety bachelor, gastronome, flower fancier and born actor. There is even a family resemblance between the two, considering Wolfe's physical likeness to Holmes' brother Mycroft...
...stories abound in the qualities that have made Wolfe's creator, now an active 82, one of the few detective writers with a wide appeal to the serious fiction reader. Stout serves up lean, lucid prose, masterly narrative construction, intricate yet gimmick-free plotting. To this may be added the flavor of what Ian Fleming called "one of the most civilized minds that has ever been applied to the art of the thriller...