Word: hollower
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...HOLLOW OF THE WAVE (318 pp.) -Edward Newhouse-Sloane...
...novel, The Hollow of the Wave, Author Newhouse, 36, has jumped the party line, but he seems to have lost his novelist's direction in the process. Neil Miller, his hero and narrator, is a cynical ex-hobo (Newhouse rode the rods in his day, too) who works in a New York publishing house; his aim is to save $1,000 and escape from it all on a tramp steamer. Larry, the publisher, is a serious, decent, do-gooding young millionaire who wants to put out good books but is completely dominated by his Communist staff...
Long before the end, readers may ask themselves the same question. The Hollow of the Wave fails to explain the social dilemma of its drifting characters and falls equally short of lighting up the sources of their individual despair. Even the Communists' victory over a bewildered liberal seems of no more interest to Author Newhouse than it does to his hero, who acts as if he expected defeat all along and manages to shrug it off. Having dived from his old Marxist crest, Novelist Newhouse himself seems still to be washing about in the hollow of the wave...
...Forget." At that point, Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, strode into the room. He was (in the words of Historian Francis Hackett) "lean, ascetic, ominous, with black fires in his hollow eyes, reminding one of certain Spanish landscapes that look like the suburbs of hell." Holding out a crucifix, Torquemada said: "Judas Iscariot sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver: Your Highness is about to sell Him for 30,000 ducats. Here He is; take Him and sell Him." He left the crucifix on a table and withdrew; shaken, the King declared that the edict would stand...
Harried Capital. As brisk, top-of-the-mind journalism, The Grand Design is fun. Dos Passos has fixed his sights on New Deal Washington, located its telltale landmarks: harried officials, their minds cross-grained with idealism and opportunism; ascetic lunches, reflecting the prevalence of ulcers; gaps of hollow loneliness between lunges of ambition; and pure-souled efforts of some men to serve their country without profit...