Word: life
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Novelist Moravia (who anomalously gives his unschooled protagonist his own clarity of thought and narration) has peppered The Woman of Rome with flashes of wisdom that seem like borrowed pearls as simple Adriana threads them: "We never get clear, definite changes in life; and those who do make hurried changes risk seeing their old habits come to the fore once again, still alive and as deep-rooted as ever." Those who want to read universal meanings into this couch-worn tale will have to do it at the level of amorality where only the Adrianas of the world can move...
Born to wealth (his father was a railroad tycoon), Firbank spent most of his short life roaming around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, halting, as the whim seized him, in a tent in the desert, a palace in Portugal or an old house in Constantinople. He carried around with him a trunkful of objets d'art, including a bronze bull, his own novels bound in white vellum, some colored quill-pens, a "vast tortoiseshell crucifix" and stacks of "those large blue rectangular postcards" on which he wrote both his novels and correspondence ("Tomorrow I go to Hayti," crooned...
Something Impalpable. "Just as in autumn," cries Sir Osbert Sitwell, casting his radiant glance back over the Firbank life work, "the silver cobwebs lightly cover the trees with a thin mist of impalpable beauty, so a similar . . . intangible loveliness hung over every page, while wit ran in, round, and underneath each word...
...Questions? In Manhattan, the magazine Woman's Life listed some rules for kissing: I) "do it on the quiet and do not tempt others," 2) "plenty of fresh air ... is a prime necessity," 3) "at a party where [kissing games] are played, be sure to gargle frequently," 4) "if you feel 'all in' after kissing or being kissed take a hot mustard foot bath...
...Whiffenpoofs of 1950 are great. For about 15 minutes last Friday night they proved this at the annual Harvard-Yale Glee Club Concert in New Haven. Zipping through such songs as "Toot Toot Tootsic," "Saloon," "Baby Sister Blues," and "Crusin' Around," they brought life to an otherwise ordinary concert with their relaxed, informal, and technically fine style...