Word: humanation
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...late James Agee's A Death in the Family has the simple beauty and drama of a folk ballad. Set in the foothills of Tennessee's Great Smokeys, it sings of "quiet summer evenings" and a Knoxville family faced with the problems of love and human loneliness. It's a song about Rufus Follete, a boy of six years or so, who wants a cap like a man's and who finds the night frightening as he lies in his bed. It's about his father, Jay, who drives too fast and sometimes drinks too much, but who sings...
Agee handles the restrained give and take of those who people his beautifully evoked scenes with a grasp of the complexity in human relationships that is almost painful. He realizes that motives are never clear, be they involved in buying a cap or loving someone. His art skillfully builds up the tense situation of Rufus trying to select a cap that will not offend his Aunt's tastes, and yet satisfy his own preference for gaudy colors. She is equally concerned about not intimidating him in the choice, and the result is a scene of touching humor...
...French never seem so amusing as when they are laughing at themselves and at human nature in general. And it is kindly and tolerant laughter. The subject of spoof in Fernandel the Dressmaker is the Parisian haute couture...
Both Eggers and Ferri point out that their glide or skip missiles are also promising as vehicles for bringing a human crew back alive from a satellite orbit or a trip to the moon. But it is safe to guess that the enormous amount of money and effort already expended on hypervelocity flight would not be made available without a military motive. There is some slim chance of countering a crude ballistic missile that can follow only a predictable course to a single target. But a hypervelocity missile that moves about as fast and can change its course...
...young woman's engagement. It gets to the point immediately, beginning with: "I am an old woman. I do not pretend to be anything else," and continues to the end hammering this fact home with relentless determination. Nowhere does Miss Thursh behave inconsistently, i.e., like a nice, ordinary human being. She keeps a card catalog on the emotional lives of the neighbors as her kind, simple maid faithfully and quite innocently reports them. Using this field, she calls in a young woman about to be married and treats the poor girl as if she were a statistical abstract...