Word: novels
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...twentieth century novel? I think James would be delighted with Faulkner's technical virtuosity, at its best. Lack of professionalism would have bothered him--James was a professional. And he didn't like violence in the novel. There are a few suicides and accidents, but nothing rash. His novels deal with mature people and the problems that arise among mature people...
Another question is in order. How could a smoothly expert screenwriter like Nunnally Johnson (The Desert Fox, The Three Faces of Eve) have wrung so much carbonated pap out of a skillfully written Romain Gary novel? "Marriage is the last frontier," says Fonda. "Few men face it without remembering what happened to Dr. Livingstone." With that he proposes to an aspiring star (Leslie Caron), whose name he soon writes in the Hollywood sky. They marry, but he is too busy merchandising his wife's soul to give husbandly attention to her body; as their marriage nears its third...
When busy Housewife Shirley Jackson finds time for a new novel, she instinctively begins to id-lib. Her favorite fictional creation is the normal-looking girl who lives in a private nightmare of someone else's making. This heroine is usually close enough to sanity to be alarmed by her own fantasies, near enough to a strait-jacket to invite immediate psychoanalysis. The familiar formula, which worked almost magically well in Hangsaman (TIME, April 23, 1951). but began to look a bit seedy in The Bird's Nest (TIME, June 21, 1954), still carries...
...night errantry, of seductions conducted on a scale that will amaze today's grey-flannel philanderer. But the language is witty and infinitely less crude than that of almost any contemporary bestseller. And Casanova's powers of observation make his autobiography read like a fascinating picaresque novel. As Critic Edmund Wilson put it: "Even when he has slipped to the bottom, he keeps his faculties clear...
...your party. You'll play another round of literary hopscotch--"I read Jude the Obscure last summer." "Oh, did you? I just finished Tom Jones, it's the first picaresque novel." And then you'll talk, in small attentive groups, of value judgments and semantic differences; or you'll remind each other that you have no identities yet, and speculate about Our Generation. Pull off each garment covering your souls, but don't worry, you can't escape the cliche. It's Saturday night, gentlemen, and I'm staying home to study...