Word: guignol
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...Directions has just published a translation of Guignol's Band, third novel of Louis-Ferdinand Celine. This contemporary French author is unknown to the majority of American readers, but in Europe he is one sort of successful writer: the controversial kind. At a time when it is difficult to be truly Avant-garden, he qualifies, and his followers consider him a permanent figure in French letters...
...Since Guignol's Band is written in the difficult form of "stream of consciousness," it deserves to be considered as an experimental work, rather than a book which can be read, enjoyed, understood, and put back on the shelf. Guignol's Band makes extremely difficult reading...
...answer in the case of 'Guignol's Band is yes. The reader cannot become involved with the characters of the book because there is nothing sympathetic about them, and the action adds nothing to what the reader retains. The impressions are vivid, and in the impressions association is possible; but one wonders whether a chapter is not long enough to convey the tragedy of human beings lost and alone in the world...
...Grand Guignol. Joseph Stalin had no friends, but there were always sycophants around him, and the longest-lived of all of them was Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. Like Stalin, Beria was born in the Transcaucasian state of Georgia. The record says that he came of a poor peasant family in the Sukhum region. At 18, he became a member of the Russian Social Democratic (Bolshevik) Party. He worked underground, was jailed by the post-Czarist government of Azerbaijan, released on the plea of Russian Ambassador Kirov, after which he joined the Cheka (secret police) and took an active part in overthrowing...
...even more often arty, but that it exposes decadence with decadent means. Lush and sensational, it uses its material as theatrical hootch; it spells out every sentence and then adds exclamation points. Causes are forgotten in the passion for effects; a vision of Hell dwindles into a Grand Guignol. Elia Kazan has directed the play vividly as a theater piece; he doubtless could not help adding glare to what cries out for shade...