Word: marquands
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Mosquitoes & Poison Ivy. Did the years ahead, then, offer no contentment? Certainly not, said Novelist John P. Marquand at Massachusetts' Governor Dummer Academy-and a good thing, too. "I have observed," said he, "a number of superficially contented men and women . . . and I maintain they are dangerous. Personally, I am glad to say there are a lot of things today with which I am not contented ... I am not contented with the road system in Newbury . . . nor do I like the control of mosquitoes ... I am not contented with the Boston & Maine Railroad . . . nor do I like...
...Speaker Marquand had anything to be contented about, it presumably was the ample supply of discontent in the U.S. and the rest of the world at graduation time...
...like to think of banking," said Bank President Tony Burton in John P. Marquand's Point of No Return, "as . . . the most basically human business that there is in the world." Last week, Tony Burton got some backhanded support for his assertion from the FBI's Inspector Lee R. Pennington, who investigates bank frauds. Addressing a conference of the National Association of Mutual Savings Banks in Washington, Pennington said that most of last year's frauds (total lost: $3,000,000) were traceable to some fairly common human failings: gambling, drink, women. High living, big debts...
...there is the question of organization. The long flashback in the middle of the book sags perceptibly. After a couple of chapters one is perfectly willing to accept the author's word for the fact that the social strata in a small New England town are extremely solidified. Mr. Marquand, however, piles on more and more illustrations. Everything that happens to Charley Gray seems caused by the fact that he isn't quite on the top of the social ladder...
Finally, there is the basic philosophy of the book. While Mr. Marquand is a master at describing the outward characteristics of the people about whom he writes, he fails when he probes any deeper than their social climbing or the cut of their suits. Basically, he is saying that the man who typifies our urban eastern civilization, the rising executive who rides the commuter's locals and hopes to send his children to good prep schools, is caught in a horrible treadmill. A rut is what you make of it; even Mr. Marquand's social anthropologist--a fascinating literary device...