Word: ishness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unfortunately, this defect is far more crucial in the book than it is in the course. For the guts of Hum 6 (as of "Literature X" the imaginary Hum 6-ish course Brower outlines in his introduction to this volume) are not to be found here: the carefully prepared and skillfully guided discussions of a work of literature by which the students are brought to discover for themselves the subtleties of the work. Brower's idea of first year literature course doesn't rely very heavily on lectures, except as a means to introduce new students to the practice...
...characters are only older than Updike himself (30); most of them are either adolescents or young married people. A good many of the stories are autobiographical, yet they are not simply New Yorker-ish reminisces. There is a certain digested quality about them which compresses and transforms the commonplace events Updike relates, and gives them a wider and often surprising significance...
...perhaps easier than those of Mr. Pinchwife (Michael Rowan), and Mr. Sparkish (Howard Kramer), and Sir Jasper (Chuck Breyer). Rowan creates a convincing picture of a blustery old fool; Kramer is the biggest, dumbest fop you or I have ever seen; and Breyer is hilarious as the Ed Wynn-ish cuckold...
...Widow Leosadia Begbick, a saloon-keeping trollop, has to bundle up in ratty Lotte Lenya togs and belt out a couple of those sour songs that were Mrs. Weill's stock-in-trade. (The words for most of these songs are by Mr. Bentley, the music--as Wall-ish as a composer of Sing Musel can make it--by Mr. Joseph Raposo...
...G.B.S. has included almost every one of his favorite types; there's the self-made S. B. Clemens-ish Tycoon, the capable Mother, the daring Young Thing, an impossible Suitor for her, a pious Burglar, a graying Aristocrat, and, of course, the "independent" Foreign Lady who can comment caustically on anything the home-bred figures miss. And, then, they all talk--Lord, how they talk: two straight hours of chatter as each character rises hungrily in turn, like a guppy at the food in a goldfish bowl, to strike his pose and horrify at least a good 1/9th...