Word: inwardness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken. Well cut, correct and a trifle oldfashioned, the author's short stories deal brilliantly with inward torment but less well with events; the best of them are of a very high order indeed...
...describes love affairs frequently, but writes less well of men and women than of men alone. Events are less important to him than inward torment, and consequently his prose is rich in soliloquies and barren of drama. But within these limitations his best stories are of a very high order, and they might seem the product of genius rather than of painstaking craftsmanship if one could not see the techniques of their construction in other, slightly less successful stories in the collection. The familiar Silent Snow, Secret Snow is the prize of the lot-a brilliant evocation of a young...
...fine reflective moments too, as when Becket resists the snare of a false humility. But with equal ease Anouilh goes in for every approach, from the slangiest to the most sculptured. He has thus set Peter Glenville problems of staging that have been only partly solved: with the most inward of themes, Becket runs largely to externalized effects...
...possible also for painters to paint possible for their agents. It is even possible for novelists to write novels only the initiated can decipher. But a play without a participating audience is simply not a play. The stage, even in its proscenium days, was never comprehended within the three inward dimensions but always had the fourth of the attending consciousness--a fourth dimension which the Noh play symbolized by the brooding figure waiting at the bridge. The young man of talent who thinks he can teach himself to be a playwright or a director or an actor by writing...
...sentimentality, Wallant follows every step of Berman's descent into melancholia. His eye and ear, as he tells of Berman's deterioration, are so good that time after time readers may experience the discomforting shock of self surprised. At first the plumber's grief seems simple-inward weeping set off by a breath of perfume from a bathroom cabinet, or the sudden spaciousness of his bed. Then, wallowing in his sadness, Berman turns on everyone who offers comfort. Even his married daughter, who tries to mother him, is stung by his quick, aimless angers, his sullen preference...