Word: novels
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
British Author Aldous (Brave New World Revisited) Huxley, 64, journeyed from his California home to Manhattan, collected $1,000 and a medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for "having done the best work of our time in . . . the novel of ideas." In his acceptance speech Huxley modestly disclaimed genius, alluding to an observation by short-necked Honore de Balzac that most men of genius have short necks. Duly noting his own long neck, lanky Novelist Huxley asserted: "Genius, after all, is an alliance of head with heart, and the shorter the neck, the closer that alliance...
...Young Philadelphias (Warner), the film version of a popular novel by Richard Powell, is a sort of updated Kitty Foyle that has lost its wit and is fumbling for a moral: social status isn't everything. As in Christopher Morley's 1939 bestseller, the story tells what happens when a Philadelphia girl (Diane Brewster) tries to go beyond her station on the well-known Main Line. She marries into one of the very best families, but on her wedding night discovers that the blue blood has run pathetically thin. Frightened and confused, she flies back to the arms...
...note to his publisher, the writer of this ironic romance observes that "I guess I'm the least known author of my ability in America." The titles of some of his previous books (Gestalt Therapy, Art and Social Nature) suggest why. But in this novel, Author Goodman shows an impressive gift for fiction. His prose is strong-flavored and exact, his comedy is caustic. Still, for all its humor, The Empire City bulges like a diplodocus. The first of its four overlong, sometimes aimless books was begun in 1939, and Goodman says he may yet write another volume...
Whatever else can be said for or against Dublin-born Samuel (Waiting for Godot) Beckett, he deserves full marks for consistency. Having decided that life is a hapless, hopeless thing, he goes right on repeating his message. His latest novel to be published in the U.S. (it was written in 1953) does not back off an inch from the chasm. Watt is a worthy literary companion to such other Beckett anti-heroes as Murphy, Malone and Mahood. Like them, he does not have a chance, and does not really want...
...fundamental as these two problems may be, they are not novel. What is unusual is Douglass Cater's suggestion in his book, The Fourth Branch of Government, that something may be wrong with the machinery itself. His examination of Washington reporting as he has seen it in nine years as Washington editor of the Reporter suggests that the changes in Washington and in reporting in the last thirty years found the reporter unprepared and left him slightly dazed and greatly altered...