Word: fictioners
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When John Marquand '15 was asked whether he enjoyed his undergraduate days at Harvard, he replied without hesitation, "Not especially." Likewise, when somebody asks, "Is the fiction that has been written about Harvard eminently literary, perceptive, and distinguished?" the answer must be, "Not especially . . . but the variety is astounding...
...answer to the first question it seems that the fiction and poetry are hardly more than a miscellaneous assortment of writing, and at that not particularly unusual. Gerald Gillespie's story might have appeared in the Advocate, as could have D. J. Hughes' poem, Mallarme at Tournon. In terms of quality, the poetry in the current issue is rather unrewarding, especially compared with the last issue which included Allen Grossman, Stephen Booth and Gregory Corso. Canticle for Simonetta by Richard Sewell is uneven, at times forced, and fails to achieve an essential opposition. What is left is a good idea...
...fiction achieves a higher level. Paul Goodman's play Abraham and Isaac, while it does not deepen or alter our basic understanding of the biblical situation in the fashion of Kierkergaard's Fear and Trembling, does retell the story with poetic insight into the man of faith's process of willing. Also colorful bits of Hebraic philosophy enrich our understanding of the chracters and their outlook on life...
...course of his philosophic thought into detours of personalities and opinions. Some pithy detours: ¶"Germans as far as I know have no capacity for being bored. Else I think the race would have become extinct long ago through self-torture." ¶"The material world is a fiction; but every other world is a nightmare." ¶ "I think that art, etc., has a better soil in the ferocious 100% America than in the Intelligentsia of New York. It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theatres, etc., that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands...
...book, and Author Bowles brings the Moroccan locale to life with meticulous realism. If his cast of characters has a cosmetic blush that suggests not the novelist's but the embalmer's art, that is a quality which fans of Bowles's rather special fiction have long since learned to enjoy...