Word: maudlinity
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HERZOG, by Saul Bellow. This long-awaited novel will not quite establish Bellow in his long-reserved place in the U.S. literary pantheon. Though the writing and the characterizations are often brilliant, and each single page is a delight. Anti-Hero Herzog is too passive and maudlin to carry a plot to a wholly satisfactory conclusion...
There were fleeting moments on a higher plane. Operatic Soprano Anna Moffo, aglitter in gold, thrilled with a selection from La Traviata. Folk Singer Joan Baez, musically effective if a bit maudlin, dedicated All My Trials and its plea, "Hush, little baby, don't you cry," to Jacqueline Kennedy. The show crashed to a close as a huge red heart emblazoned U.S.A. LOVES L.B.J. drifted from the ceiling and the crowd chorused an Allan Sherman parody to the tune Once in Love with Amy. Sample lyric...
Died. Ben Hecht, 70, playwright and screenwriter, a onetime Chicago newsman who, with the late Charles MacArthur, immortalized the seedy Galahads of Cook County pressrooms with his rowdy 1928 valentine, The Front Page, thereafter indulged his bent for vinegarish sentiment in maudlin novels and Zionist pamphleteering, but plied a true trade as one of Hollywood's most highly paid ($5,000 a week, even in the 1930s) and accomplished script doctors, turning out dozens of literate originals, such as The Scoundrel (also with MacArthur) and Crime Without Passion, adaptations ranging from Wuthering Heights to A Farewell to Arms...
...whores pouring in from all over town, down the dark streets in tiny cars; I'Amerique was in. And men you knew and in some strange way liked, threw fifties and hundreds of dollars away on 7-Up bottles they called champagne, for $13. I hardly want to become maudlin: they had the money, after all, to throw away. And there is such a vast emptiness in lives of transit that, once ashore, you ache for excess...
Scriptwriters Waterhouse and Hall, and director John Schlesinger have more than redeemed themselves after their previous collaboration, A Kind of Loving. Despite good reviews, that was a dreadful film--pretentious, hackneyed, maudlin, static--everything that Billy Liar is not. Here they move easily between fantasy and reality, in flowing, witty sequences...