Word: ikhnaton
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Died. David Stacton, 42, U.S. historical novelist; of a stroke; near Copenhagen. Often brilliant, sometimes exasperating, Stacton wrote 13 novels illuminating history's dark corners, from the courts of Pharaoh Ikhnaton (On a Balcony), to 14th century Japan (Segaki), to the assassination of Lincoln (The Judges of the Secret Court). In each, his epigrammatic, sinewy prose evoked the ambiance of an age so effectively that critics rated him one of the best of the postwar crop of American authors...
...plots suggested by Jack London. Stacton writes so fast that he is able to arrange his novels in "triplets"-bouquets of three related volumes-and he turns out a triplet almost every year. Among his novels published in the U.S. are On a Balcony, about Nefertiti and the Pharaoh Ikhnaton; The Judges of the Secret Court, about the events subsequent to Lincoln's assassination; and most recently, A Dancer in Darkness, a superbly gory retelling of the legend of the Duchess of Amalfi. Usually his books are brief and taut, and he is contemptuous of jumbo novels "for women...
...characters who vibrate to Stacton's obsessive music move in a dim past - 14th century Japan (Segaki), Yucatan at the time of the Spanish conquest (A Signal Victory), the court of the Pharaoh Ikhnaton (On a Balcony). This time the novelist chooses a subject particularly well suited to his oddly cerebral evocation of blood and brass: the legend of the Duchess of Amain...
...history, a Spanish renegade named Guerrero, who tried to shake the Maya princes from their fatalism and organize resistance to the invaders. The enigma of Guerrero is not fully resolved at the book's end; he is a less complete character than that other Stacton enigma, the Pharaoh Ikhnaton of the brilliant On a Balcony (TIME, Sept. 6. 1959). The trouble may be that philosophical novelists are, in their weakest moments, tract-writing zealots. Stacton's message in this book is that the proper study of doomed men is how to die with dignity. But in his eagerness...
...fruitful framework for an inter-disciplinary approach, with courses presenting the art, history, political institutions, and philosophies of these ancient cultures on the successful pattern of Soc Sci 111. Harvard may not accommodate a Breasted, but it could certainly enrich its history curriculum with studies of Memphis or Ikhnaton, of Nebuchadrezzar of Chaldea--a sore deficiency in the University at present...