Word: humorous
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...heroine most unhappy. The hero, an ambitious graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, is discouraged, disillusioned, thoroughly seduced and debauched by a saffron sadist who curses her race tor its jealousy of "rising" members and its hypocritical renunciation ot "nigger" instincts. There is no health in the book, no humor. There is feverish color, hot animalism, degradation. Whether he has told the truth or not-and the glossary appended shows that he at least knows Negro language-jaded Author Van Vechten will, henceforth, probably avoid the headquarters of Negro self-betterment...
...which has been criticism of art, music, books. The more literate magazines have welcomed his contributions in verse and prose. Last year he published Godhead, a powerful story of a "superman" whose original he discovered while covering a strike on the Gogebic iron range, northern Michigan. The contrasting humor and whimsy of his new novel is as astonishing as it is joyous...
Normal revue humor on large stages usually depends on the comedian's ability to shout: "That was no lady, that was his wife." In a miniature, satirical show like Americana the attack is subtler. A satire on Rotary Club speeches, a burlesque jazz opera, a tabloid newspaper number, and a burlesque Hamlet done in the manner of The Student Prince are the major features. There are only a handful of chorus girls; each in her time plays many parts. The scenery is by the briskly amusing John Held Jr. Charles Butterworth, Notre Dame 1923 and utterly unknown to Broadway...
...sleeping near horses and to acquire respect for the Chinese puzzle that is French army discipline. It just happened that he could punch, ride, shoot, drill, sleep, spy, drink, disguise, obey, command and love-his-country better than any one else in that camp, and that his sense of humor had been developed on the famed playing-fields of Eton. So he was soon promoted to posts of great importance, intriguing with desert tribes across the Mediterranean...
...author's encyclopaedic knowledge of native and military life in North Africa. He is one of the few novelists on record who can spatter their pages with italicized words-jellabias, bassourabs, girbas, tohs, fil-fil, mehara, hareem, Bismillah!-without seeming unduly affected. His dialogs crackle, his humor sparkles. He lets Mary Van- brugh mock his hero throughout with snatches from the song of Abdul, the Bulbul Emir. He introduces Mary's Cockney maid, Maudie, to ridicule "sheik fiction" of the E. M. Hull type...