Word: max
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...advanced, intelligent people who have no patience with old notions of simple, pre-Freudian goodness, pre-Marxian prosperity or purely American foreign policy. At pretending to know what they don't know, Forward's editors are impressive, and none is more so than swarthy, neurotic, tweedy Max Divver...
Take a Sunny Morning. The eyes that finally see through Max to his sad and waif-like soul are the sleepy eyes of Mrs. Morgan's 18-year-old son Jimmy. An epileptic and a problem child who refuses to believe anything his tutors tell him about basic trends or the continuity of Western culture, Jimmy wears his mother down until she opens the nursery door, lets him go along with Divver on a trip to the Polish Corridor in the summer...
...doesn't take Max Divver long to demonstrate what a lost soul he is. Then, in his shame, he unburdens himself to Jimmy, confessing bitterly that he really loves his wife, that he doesn't give much of a damn for the working class, doesn't believe in Forces or in any of the things he. has pretended to believe in, and wishes to God that he had never been educated and could say what he thinks...
Take Casanova. While Max goes off to get drunk and pick a fist fight with a Nazi, Jimmy is left alone to conduct-or be conducted in-his first love affair. Later that night, as he stands trembling in his mistress' closet listening to the husband's unexpected return, then as he flees naked down the hotel corridor, clutching his evening shoes and dinner coat, he remembers Casanova and realizes in a flash that this is what his tutors were talking about -the continuity of Western culture...
...summer wears away; the Polish Corridor becomes the hottest spot in Europe. A frantic cable comes from Jimmy's mother. An old terror returns to him: he may have another epileptic seizure any day. But before he does, the Forces of history converge on Mell and kill Max Divver, their disillusioned celebrant, as he is making a last confused and furious effort to acquire personal dignity...