Word: jakes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...production was in the capable hands of the company's director, Sarah Caldwell. She staged the action scenes vividly, with swirling movement, loud speakers, sirens and flashing lights and kept the quiet moments simple and suit ably spacious in their loneliness. The cast - including Richard Fredricks as Lev, Jake Gardner as Yuri and Curtis Rayam as Olympion - sang with conviction. Two in particular matched the aplomb of Caldwell's conducting: Arlene Saunders, in lustrous voice as Nadia, and Cynthia Clarey, warmly sympathetic as a nurse who serves as a peacemaker...
...JAKE'S THING by Kings ley Amis Viking; 276 pages...
...that was 25 years ago. The inspired comedy of Lucky Jim has worn well, and so has Amis the man of letters. His characters, though, as Jake's Thing demonstrates, have grown pinched and crabby with age. Jake Richardson, 59, and his overweight wife Brenda have a problem. "I realized," Jake explains to his doctor, "something that used to be a big part of my life wasn't there any more." That thing is sex. A brash American who leads an encounter group grudgingly attended by Jake puts the matter succinctly: "What's with Jake is that...
This semipublic humiliation is only one of the affronts that Jake must bear. His psychiatrist lays out a rigid regimen to revive the patient's libido. At night, Jake must plug himself into something called a nocturnal mensurator, a machine that registers and records signs of arousal during his sleep. He must buy and study "pictorial pornographic material" and also write out a sexual fantasy of his own imagining in not less than 600 words. Try as he might, Jake conies up 73 words short, despite much padding: "With lazy languorous movements she peels off the dress and reveals...
Amis deftly exploits the comic possibilities of Jake's ordeal, but the author has more on his mind, perhaps too much more, than comedy alone. Jake is a reactionary curmudgeon, and his view rules the novel. He may have a problem, but society is sick. He rejects his psychiatrist's diagnosis of repressions: "I was doing fine when things really were repressive, if they ever were, it's only since they've become, oh, permissive that I've had trouble." In the end, Jake issues a jeremiad against his own treatment and therapy in general...