Word: hal
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...Hal Lear, Martha's husband, a physician and a man of intelligence and sensitivity. The pain that woke him was the onset of his first heart attack. Before Dr. Lear's death four years later, he was to suffer every indignity open to victims of cardiac disease. Worse, as a doctor he understood exactly what was happening to him, so that he was not even granted the anesthesia of ignorance...
That anger is not directed solely at Hal and his illness. The author's finest fury is saved for medical institutions. Norman Cousins was ironic: "A hospital is no place for a person who is seriously ill." Martha Lear is splenetic: "The social atrocities committed by the staff!" she recalls of Hal's initial hospital admission. "It was as though, by the simple act of signing in, patients forfeited the right to be treated with respect." Her husband reinforces her feelings...
...this vein, The Shining draws from 2001, where man was overcome by man-made constructions. The Overlook's power to shine and torment its guests recalls the malignant power of HAL, the computer in Kubrick's space odyssey. the walls of the Overlook breathe; in one scene, mention of the hotel creates a physical space between Jack and Danny. "I love it," whispers Jack, leering...
...almost impossible to find any Washington columnist who is really for Jimmy Carter. Down in Carter's Georgia, Hal Gulliver, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, suspects that columnists like David Broder and Joe Kraft wake up mornings feeling fine for 30 seconds until they remember who is President, and then their day is ruined. Gulliver puts it down to anti-Southern prejudice, but of course that's just a rebel yell, not a sensible argument...
...comic invention, is scarcely an easier part to play, but Anthony Quayle makes it seem not only simple, but natural, as if he had grown into it, just as Falstaff grew into his big belly. His most eloquent speech comes not from his mouth, but from his eyes, when Hal, now king, repudiates both him and his own past misdeeds: "I know thee not, old man . . . Presume not that I am the thing I was." Jon Finch is also good as Henry IV, who has won a crown but lost his peace of mind. The greatest honors must...