Word: mama
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Beer, tea-and coffeehouses loud with the sounds of Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Gerry Mulligan are sprouting like rice shoots in Japan's major cities. But Mama, Carrousel, Swing, or Fujiya Music Salon are nothing like Manhattan's Metropole or Birdland. Instead of the usual clutter of tables and clatter of highballs, Japan's hipsters sit in desklike seats set in rows of two, railroad-style, sipping their drinks in scholarly contemplation and rarely speaking, as jazz, either recorded or live, engulfs them in smoky parlors. Girls in the crowd affect tight toreador pants; the boys...
...marriage counselor, has handled 300 marital cases in the past three years. The usual story: "The husband plays on the Missouri side of the river before he gets out here. Maybe it's just a few extra-dry martinis with the gang from his office. Maybe not. Anyway, Mama has a little more money than average. She has a maid. That gives her a heck of a lot of time to sit around and think. If hubby is late-boy, does she think...
...ravishing!" cried Le Troquer, a longtime widower and an authentic war hero who lost an arm in World War I. To Rose he said: "I know that you would like to be a dancer. I have plenty of friends at the Opera." Telephoning Rose's mama, Le Troquer said: "I must congratulate you on having raised your daughter so well. Rose is so sweet, so reserved. This is a young girl such as, unhappily, one rarely encounters today...
This blend of animal anguish and animal high spirits sets the tone for the whole story, as seen through the eyes of Paolino di Alba, a precocious 13-year-old. To Paolino, poverty is spelled ATLAS and HERCULES, the words on the cement bags his mother uses for diapers. Mama is patient, pious, and always pregnant. Papa is a bricklayer and a sport who feels a cut above the other paesanos. He flaunts a blonde, green-eyed "American" mistress named Delia with whom he wins dance contests at the local vaudeville palace...
...pagan appetite in Author di Donato's book and no more sinful than salami. However, Mama does break up Papa's affair when Delia goes so far as to have a child by him. Mama's triumph is brief; short weeks later, Papa is pinned to death under a collapsing wall. As the keening women cluster about the open coffin, Paolino seems to hear in their voices a lament for his dead boyhood...