Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Arnold Schulman's A Hole in the Head is a rather good addition to the corpus of laughter-and-tears drama. It is not a thesis play; nor is it a deep one. The author chose the just-plain-folks, people-in-the-house-next-door, it-could-happen-to-you genre, set within the framework of a specific middle-class cultural milieu--the sort that has tempted many American writers, with varying success, ever since Abie's Irish Rose...
Kingdom by the Sea. The novel's European narrator calls himself Humbert Humbert and the doubletalk name sets the note of self-mockery that runs-laughter questioning the validity even of despair-throughout the book. Humbert's ignominious, fatal obsession is for little girls in the 9-14 bracket-not ordinary little girls but a special kind he calls "nymphets." As Humbert explains it in a passage that is typical of his style: "You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins...
...School Bus. If farce keeps rattling through the story, the reason is that Author Nabokov himself is an irrepressibly witty man who can see tragedy through laughter as clearly as he can see life's darkest side from its calmest vantage point. Nabokov teaches European literature at Cornell, is also a dedicated lepidopterist who has discovered about a dozen new species and subspecies. He disclaims all but a writer's interest in nymphets. To get sub-teen patter right, he took rides in a school bus. He obviously also learned much about roadside America. Says he: "I love...
...hero Stephen stood in the school study listening to the voices of boys at play. "That is God,'' said Stephen, "a shout in the street." Nabokov also seems to be asserting that all of creation is God, and that Humbert, listening in vain for the laughter of a child, knew it at the bitter...
...stabbing that goes on in show business, and by the pressure of Paar's schedule-for in his life, almost every night is opening night. Each show is preceded by a private warmup, ranging from gnawing anxiety to panic. During the hours of preparation-which must end in laughter or failure-Paar is probably doing his hardest work. At noon on a recent, typical pre-show day, Jack was prowling his barn-red twelve-room house in suburban Bronxville, N.Y. His breakfast had been spoiled by an unfriendly newspaper comment on the previous night's show...