Word: lamentations
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week the villagers of Orgosolo trooped once again to the local churchyard to sob the age-old Sardinian funeral lament of one Antonio Francesco Manca, 48, a goatherd by trade and the father of four children. By ancient tradition, his death notice was posted in the village streets, "killed by an unknown hand and unexpectedly taken from his dear ones . . ." Why? Nobody knew, except that Antonio was No. 13 on the list...
Another poem, by Peter Viereck, is a satirical lament on the development of poetry and its critics. Playing a distinct second fiddle to T. S. Eliot, Viereck sighs, "Today the women come and go--Talking of T. S. Eliot." For those who feel that Pound's poetry is intolerable because of his political behavior, that the verse of Eliot is fickle because of the author's flirtation with the classics and religion, and so on with the heirs of 1912, then Full Cycle may extract a chuckle here and there. Viereck, however, falls to equally deplorable sins of banality...
...Neill's lofty prestige of the '20s and '30s, Moon does read better than The Iceman Cometh. Iceman hacked at its one point-that man cannot live without illusions-with an icepick. Moon switches from the disenchanted mind to the undernourished heart. At core, its lament for the loveless is a gentle and moving...
Serious Turn. Alas, Rector Barbee is by no means equal to the chase. He flees to a parish in Montana, and with Barbee gone, Lament for Four Virgins turns pretty serious. Author Tucker traces the careers of her four girls into middle age-Angela into a late, dreary marriage, Ellen Terra into sloppy promiscuity, Hope into money and dipsomania, and crippled Carrie into a solid romance with her doctor. The post-Barbee era is readable enough, but it lacks the spirit of the old days...
Novelist Tucker and her publishers should do all right, anyhow. Seven years ago, before leaving for a long stay in Europe, she drew a modest, $250 advance from Random House. Nine months ago, Lael Tucker (wife of Novelist-TIME, Oct. 16, 1950-Charles Christian Wertenbaker) turned in Lament for Four Virgins. After a close look, Random House not only decided to publish it but sold reprint rights, in advance of publication, to Bantam Books for $35,000-a Bantam record for a first novel...