Word: frigid
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...lack of one) between a rich, rampageous, epileptic Ecuadorian general and a prim, suicide-seeking, coffin-toting English governess. A kind of double target, Now I Lay Me contrasts farcically-as E. M. Forster and others have done more seriously-the torrid zone of the emotions with the frigid; i.e., Latin excesses and flamboyance with British repressions and good form...
...Ryan, the adapter, has been unable to capture the buoyancy of Bemelmans' writing, which derives its charm more from narration than dialogue. Those shreds of the novel which Miss Ryan has selected chronicle the ups and downs of a platonic affair between a lusty Latin-American general and his frigid English "governess," as she chooses to call herself. Two character traits come out of this union to comprise the main comic material, which is seldom funny: the governess' morbid preoccupation with her own death, and the general's sexual appetite. The rest of the play is mainly concerned with establishing...
Familiar Tunes. Publisher Laughlin's name writers are more readable, though all of them pluck away predictably at familiar tunes. Playwright Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire) explores more horror south of the Mason-Dixon line in the story of a frigid, middle-aged writer's passion for a horsy Mexican girl, also contributes some frank blank verse titled Counsel about Paris whorehouses. Expatriate Novelist Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) writes his way around his subject (Rimbaud) and plunges defiantly into his own thrice-told life and hard times. Most engaging poet: William Carlos Williams, who keeps...