Word: novelists
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...reason for this is that in all her twelve novels, Ivy Compton-Burnett has never tried to tell a convincing story. With her, any old melodrama (even including secret drawers, lost wills, fantastic skeletons in impeccable family closets) passes for plot; all Novelist Compton-Burnett needs is the chance to reveal what she is really interested in revealing-the vices, virtues and idiosyncrasies of human behavior. To this end, too, the people in her novels talk all the time but never talk naturally: unlike real people they always say just what they think, and mean just what they say; when...
...Worlds and Their Ways is not Compton-Burnett's best; it does not, for instance, reach and hold the high and extraordinary level of its predecessor, Bullivant and the Lambs (TIME, July 19). It has many more tedious and barren stretches, but they are frequently relieved by Novelist Compton-Burnett's most characteristically brilliant qualities. There are flashes of darting spite ("I hope I am not disturbing you at your luncheon, Mrs. Cassidy." "Thank you, Miss James. It is so kind to cling to the hope") and devastating responses to thoughtless queries ("Why should not school...
...James family had a rare talent for striking up acquaintances with ghosts. In 1844, when Novelist-to-be Henry James was a year old, his genial papa, Henry Sr., was scared into "a perfectly insane and abject terror" by a shape squatting invisibly before him. For two years the elder James searched for relief from his fearful visitation, tried everything from water cures to cheerful company, eventually found peace only in the esoteric mysticism of Swedish Philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg...
...Music Festival which will be held from June 27 through July 16 at Aspen, in the mountains of Colorado. The Goethe Bicentennial Foundation-whose board of directors includes such Goethe admirers as Herbert Hoover, Thomas Mann, Marshall Field, Walter Paepcke, chairman of the Container Corp. of America, and Novelist-Playwright Thornton Wilder-chose distant Aspen as the seat of homage because, in the words of Chairman Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, "we thought such a celebration ought to require a pilgrimage." At Aspen, Goethe will be the center of round-table discussions, seminars, symposia and symphony concerts...
Back at the ranch house, Arthur's return lets loose a flood of repressed passion, recriminations and superstitious maundering that Novelist Clark's meager story structure is too fragile to bear. What happens out on the snow-covered range is more successful and easily the most exciting part of the book. In a first-rate section of more than 100 pages, Curt's pursuit of the cat becomes a thriller with symbolic moral overtones that will remind some readers of Moby Dick. The cunning of the cat, the cold, the lack of food, the growing image...