Word: heros
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...trap is even harder to understand. "Months later," Thompson writers, "an Interpol detective in Paris, would study the case and wonder why in the name of God these poor people didn't figure out what was goin on?" When somebody finally does put the pieces together--the unlikely hero is a sniveling Dutch embassy employee--it is about ten people too late. Sobhraj--who has escaped from prisons and tight situations like a super criminal--proves mortal. Having tred the fine line between sanity and psychosis for the better part of his life, he finally slips into a murderous abyss...
Gregory Peck's Atticus is an especially hard act to follow, but Jewison found a superb successor in the person of Al Pacino. Pacino, who plays Arthur Kirkland, the film's do-good hero, first made the big time as Michael in The Godfather. He made it again as the run down hero of Serpico thee years ago, but there's been a drought since. Now comes Arthur Kirkland, who works perfectly for Pacino because he's a blend of Michael Corleone and Serpico. Like Corleone, Kirkland wants to do everything himself; like Serpico, he's a man fighting society...
...perennial semi-autobiographical protagonist returns this time as Walter F. Starbuck, and he is a Harvard man. He is so much a Harvard man, in fact, that were Vonnegut less obvious in writing his titles this book might well be called Kilgore Trout Goes to Harvard. Vonnegut's hero still peacefully accepts life's highs and lows, but Harvard has changed him: the lows seem a little lower, the highs a little higher, and the accepting a little harder...
...writer's self-sacrificial nature, insistent Jewish guilt, and sexual desire all torment Roth's hero, a young short story writer named Nathan Zuckerman. Nathan's dilemma concerns the purpose of his art: is his ultimate responsibility to himself or his Jewish heritage? Even the writer of the Bible must have paused to consider the personal and social consequences of his creation. In the end, Nathan, like Roth, chooses to write for himself and let the kleenex fall where they may. "There is obviously no simple way to be great," says Nathan...
Most of the cast is competent but uninspired, and clearly a bit confused about how to interpret the play. Kirsten Giroux's Goneril is a shallow, cold bitch-queen; Janet Rodger's Regan a bit more of a bitchy housewife. Henry Woronicz's Edmund swaggers like a comic hero, an illegitimate Petruchio. Harold Levine's Cornwall is a snivelling rat of a villain, more disgusting than threatening...