Word: novelled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are other apparent influences, notably Woody Allen's Bananas and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch. But actually, Parador is not nearly as sophisticated as all this borrowing would suggest. It is simply a Hollywood comedy, albeit a rather clever and funny one. And that is sufficient...
...dozen large-to-middling size shrimps) in a sauce made complex by the addition of fermented black beans. The beans are the basis of a rich sauce of their own in Cantonese cookery. Here their aromas blend with the Szechwan bouquet in a way that I find very novel. Perhaps this is the "continental cuisine" of Taipei, where Chef Hou won his epaulettes at a major hotel...
...Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney knows this turf and its voices ("I'm like, it's two in the afternoon, for Christ's sake. Most normal people have already been to sleep at least once already"). But, as in Bright Lights, McInerney is best at being mean; the novel is too shrill, too chill for compassion. Social satire may not demand a big heart, but moralizing does, and when McInerney tries to put a bleak cautionary spin onto the proceedings, the book goes out of control, just like Alison's life, and comes crashing down, leaving no trace...
...Polly Alter used to like men, but she didn't trust them anymore, or have very much to do with them." Is Polly anyone we know? Of course she is. This first line of Alison Lurie's eighth novel may not rank with "Call me Ishmael," but it fits an age in which communication between the sexes sometimes seems to be conducted solely through therapists and lawyers. Thus Lurie, whose The War Between the Tates (1974) was a notably witty account of sexual skirmishing, labels her new book as the trendiest of problem novels...
Unfortunately, the revelations about Jones are not monstrous enough (she was erratic mentally and took drugs) to disguise the real intent of the novel's rather soapy second half: to find a nice, sexy, feminist man for Polly. Why is this soapy? Because the author misplaces the fine edge of irony with which she described the lesbian Jeanne. Her tone becomes ever so slightly earnest. And earnest, in the writing of social comedy, is what it is very important...