Word: gerhardi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
PENDING HEAVEN-William Gerhardi-Harper...
...hero of Author Gerhardi's latest book, is a writer by profession, but women are his trouble. He has a wife, whom he has left in the background and who remains there. His friend Victor, a writer of similar tastes if slightly more stable temperament, acts first as a sympathetic audience for Max's troubles, then as an increasingly unwilling provider of Max's women. Victor's secretary, Phyllis, is the first to go. For a while the three of them try living together in an idyllic but badly managed flat; then comes the inevitable ruction...
...Author. William Gerhardi was born in St. Petersburg in 1895, the son of an English cotton-spinning manufacturer settled there. He was educated in St. Petersburg schools and at Worcester College, Oxford; served in the World War in the 5th Reserve Cavalry, with the Military Attache of the British Embassy at Petrograd, with the British Military Mission to Siberia. He was decorated with the Czechoslovak Croix de Guerre, the Rus-sian Order of St. Stanislav. Though he was a friend of Katherine Mansfield and corresponded with her for years, he never met her. Other books: Futility, Anton Chekhov, The Polyglots...
Thinly disguised under the synonym Ottercove, Lord Newspaper-Magnate Beaverbrook appears in Gerhardi's new book, avowedly "pure and unmixed, except for the obvious extravaganza." But Beaver-brook's life has been so rich in extravaganza that the fictitious is not always obvious. Ottercove rides in a Winged Chariot, a comfortable limousine that darts down London streets or rises quietly into the air far above traffic and turmoil. He promises Protegé Dickon (Gerhardi himself in disguise) his greatest evening paper as wedding present, but reneges. He begets a son of Eva, whom he marries...
...maudlin good. But out of necessity perhaps to H. G. Wells to whom the book is dedicated, Author Gerhardi winds up his loose strands with a tiresome world destruction. Ottercove flies with Vernon Sprott (Arnold Bennett) toward the patch of earth that survives the end of the world, but disintegrates on the way. As Castor & Pollux the two men are immortalized by the glowing ends of their cigars. Ottercove's unborn son and Eva and some of her lovers are chief survivors of the extravaganza...