Word: lefts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Finally, he worked his way into an awkward five-minute overview of the world that he had been writing for three days. It positioned him somewhat to the right of his reputation as a liberal policeman but slightly to the left of the conservative attitude maintained by the station's majority stockholder, Gene Autry. Reddin's prime target was the dissidents: "I am fed up with the militant, regardless of color or political persuasion, who is constantly on the attack. The promoters of urban guerrilla warfare are as much the enemy of our society as the soldier...
...which "the sabre-toothed tiger and the ant are our paragons, and the butterfly is condemned for its wings, which are uneconomic." In his brilliantly styled poems, essays, novels (Before the Bombardment, 1926; The Man Who Lost Himself, 1929; Miracle on Sinai, 1933) and his monumental five-volume autobiography (Left Hand, Right Hand!), he re-created in all its opulence the belle époque in which he spiritually lived, yet, ironically displayed whimsical delight in shattering the social and cultural shibboleths of his peers. He described himself in Who's Who as one who "has conducted a series...
...honor roll of movie stars of the '40s: Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massev, Eduardo Ciannelli, Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson, Keenan Wynn. Together they pick the hambone clean in a search for the usual lost gold cache -before they get wiped out in the customary massacre. Left over are a Mexican villain (Omar Sharif), leathery Marshal Mackenna (Gregory Peck), one surly, burly Apache and two obligatory ladies. The blonde (Camilla Sparv), supposedly Arizona-born and bred, speaks with a heavy Swedish accent. The Indian maiden (Julie Newmar) is a red-skinned Stupefyin' Jones, left over from the musical...
They are neither. As a result, the book is engorged with minutiae that might better have been left in the filing cabinet. Much of it is Dun & Bradstreet; the Bouviers' commonest denominator seems to have been a preoccupation with getting and spending. Getter No. 1 was Michel, a cabinetmaker from the Rhone Valley, who fled France after Waterloo to settle in Philadelphia and accumulate a tidy fortune in real estate. Getter No. 2 was one of his sons, Michel Charles. With his brother John, he bought seats on the New York Stock Exchange right after its reorganization...
This massive family chronicle begins impressively and then dissipates itself in authorish rhetoric and an obsessively circular kind of storytelling. In the end, the balance left to praise is slighter by the measure of Novelist Calisher's fondness for the supersubtle...