Word: novel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...title page warns that Edwin O'Connor-author of The Last Hurrah, that uproarious and thinly disguised novel about Boston's raffish former Mayor Curley-intends Benjy as a "ferocious fairy tale." But readers can settle back unappre-hensively and enjoy this blithe-spirited, Thurberesque fable of a little boy who is too good for his own good. Along the way, longtime Bachelor O'Connor, 39, gets in some Wylie digs at Mummy. Though the fun sometimes wears thin, Benjy is a striking display of virtuosity, proving that its author can move with literary ease from Curley...
...less a literary critic than Nikita S. Khrushchev has called this book "wrong at the root" and misrepresenting life "as through a crooked mirror." Before the Russian censors caught on to this view, the Moscow magazine Novy Mir published the novel in three installments last year. At the time, the world jumped with astonishment: a Russian novelist had not only written critically of the Soviet regime, but had done so bluntly, sarcastically, rudely. With Poland and Hungary threatening to tip the boat, Not by Bread Alone had a special menace because 1) it roused wild excitement among both intellectuals...
...machine went into action, and both the Communist Party and Writers' Union denounced Author Dudintsev as a talented, well-meaning fellow who had fallen victim to "distorted and pessimistic'' notions. In a preface to this translation Dudintsev dutifully supplies a mitigating explanation of what his novel is all about. But no explanation is necessary. The book is a major, fascinating document of life in Soviet Russia...
From the start of his novel Author Dudintsev describes, side by side with Lopatkin's progress, what is happening behind the scenes in ministries, bureaus and industrial institutes. All the timeservers and Organization Men in high places are aware of one thing-that a big shot in Moscow has a pet scheme of his own regarding drainpipes, and that no Soviet citizen should ever, if he values his security, "get in the way of influential people." As Bureaucrat Drozdov, the novel's villain, tells Lopatkin: "Your mistake consists in being an individual on his own. The lone wolf...
Typo Trick. This fourth U.S.-published novel by Heinrich Boll (Adam, Where Art Thou? The Train Was on Time), best of Germany's postwar novelists, needs all his skill to emerge convincingly from a clumsy translation. A typographical trick of frequently capitalizing phrases and sentences, sometimes to convey the thoughts of children, sometimes for no discernible reason...