Word: humanism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TORREGRECA, by Ann Cornelisen. Full of an orphan's love for her adopted town, the author has turned a documentary of human adversity in Southern Italy into the unflinching autobiography of a divided heart...
HEADS, by Edward Stewart. Ivy League sacred cows are milked, and human parts are strewn about in unlikely places by ax murderers in a cheerfully gruesome novel by the author of Orpheus...
...would suggest that the real reason that Father Herbert Haag cannot accept the doctrine of original sin is to be traced to his unmarried state. Like Pelagius (another single theologian), he has not had the advantage of seeing human nature close up in the form of growing children. If he had, he would undoubtedly know that children must be taught to do right, not to do wrong. Delightful as they are, they have an inborn teacher (original sin inherited from Adam) that instructs them most effectively...
Powell's human comedy exploits to the full the incongruities of manner and matter inherent in his jumble of diverse characters, classes and accents. It seems surprising that even the British Empire could have converted such a collection of civilian highbrows, esthetes and scholars to effective military ends. Outside Whitehall, bombs are succeeded by rockets. The London toll of death and damage mounts. Throughout there is a sharp impression that what Powell refers to as "our incurable national levity" is a strong clue to the British survival. It is a specific against too much hope, and thus against bitterness...
...Graham Greene's celebrated psychodramas of doubt, doom and-damnation. His scenes are as funny as J. F. Powers', but without their cozy in-joke comicality. Keneally's humor is white, not black-a blessed relief. His book is infused with a pawky clerical awareness that human life, though sometimes capable of holiness, is more often merely funny. Thus perceptively armed, he has succeeded in translating the historic fissure in the present church into human terms. Whatever may be said of Thomas Keneally's vocation for the priesthood, he has a true vocation for fiction...