Word: novelized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Sue Kaufman, 50, journalist and author (Diary of a Mad Housewife Falling Bodies); in Manhattan. Diary, a novel that explored the vulnerabilities and frustrations of a sophisticated young couple trying to make it in Manhattan, was later a successful movie...
Spalding is not a new name in disputes over Mormonism. As early as 1833 one apostate Mormon argued that there were similarities between Smith's scriptures and an unpublished Spalding novel about the origins of the Indians. The missing Spalding manuscript was supposedly filched from a Pittsburgh publishing house by an itinerant preacher who gave the papers to Smith...
...should come as no surprise, then, if the characters in Louis Auchincloss's new novel The Dark Lady have an instant appeal for many readers. His protagonists would fit right into the Palm Court, and they are the ogled, not the oglers. They move in a world of wealth, status and power, and even their tragedies are tinged with high society glamor. And tragedies abound in this occasionally melodramatic, disjoined story, which opens during the Depression, develops which opens during the Depression, develops through World War II, skips over the Armistice years and picks up again early in the McCarthy...
...more often, the author's obvious personal intelligence, coupled with that which he bestows on his characters, including the women, counteracts the nose in the air excesses. The theatrical, artistic and literary allusions (not to mention numerous Harvard Law School alumni) that Auchincloss generously strews throughout the novel usually liven, rather than overburden his dialogue...
...scholarly approach backfires. When David, pondering an affair with his stepmother, mentions Phaedre, Auchincloss is unsubtly and rather stupidly warning the reader that the plot's next twist is unoriginal; footnotes are admirable in a scholarly essay but they don't blend well into the dialogue of a novel. And if the references to Hedda Gabler are supposed to fill vacuums in Elesine's character with delicate but complex psychological motives, Auchincloss is either flattering himself or insulting the reader. As Auchincloss he is really quite admirable. As Ibsen or as Racine, he is, however, disappointing...