Word: kingsley
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American admirers of Kingsley Amis, 64, were cheered last October to learn that The Old Devils, his 18th novel, had won the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award. "About time" seemed a fitting response to the news, especially from those readers who had discovered the writer's incendiary comic skills as far back as his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954). On the other hand, the thought of Amis' being toasted across Britain was enough to provoke an unsettling question among Stateside fans: Could it be possible that the aging bad boy wrote a book that did not insult...
TURTLE DIARY Two eccentrics (Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley) rescue a pair of tortoises from imprisonment at the London zoo. Harold Pinter writes comedy without wasting sentiment, John Irvin directs it without wasting motion...
This may seem to contradict the main thesis, but Gay is not one of those little minds bothered by the hobgoblins of foolish consistency. And the Victorians were themselves contradictory. What other age could produce such an exemplar of pious perversity as Charles Kingsley, author of The Water-Babies and chaplain to Queen Victoria herself? Even before he became engaged to young Fanny Grenfell, Kingsley wrote letters to her that were full of erotic imaginings: "A wanton tongue--yet chaste & holy, stole between my lips! What were you doing?--You were secretly kissing me." Yet whenever he felt that...
Fanny had a modicum of common sense. "I will entreat you to hurry our wedding day," she wrote. But when her family finally approved the match, Kingsley had a new idea. "I wish to shew you & my God that I have gained purity & self-control . . . and therefore when we are married, will you consent to remain for the first month in my arms a virgin bride, a sister only?" Well, somehow they managed to conceive four children and live together in Victorian happiness for more than 30 years...
Even though Turtle Diary is beautiful to watch--not to mention listen to--and the performances of Kingsley and Jackson are, as usual, outstanding, there seems to be something missing, or perhaps, with such subtle direction, the point is tough to grasp. Whatever the problem is, when you leave the theater you'll probably wonder what just happened while uttering the word "turtle" in the best Glenda Jackson imitation you can muster...