Word: novels
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Marriage is a desperate thing," wrote the 17th century English jurist John Selden. Three centuries later, after 13 years of seeming marital bliss, the two main characters in J. R. Salamanca's superb new novel suddenly discover what complex anguish Selden had in mind...
...rule, the effect of Irving Wallace's books is indirectly proportional to his reader's lack of information and sophistication. The Seven Minutes, a turgid, untitillating novel about an obscenity trial, is no exception. It is a book for people who don't know much about pornography but who know what they like...
Novelist Mallet-Joris, however, seems imaginatively sure of the answers. She is a Belgian educated at Bryn Mawr. It is not frivolous to say that she learned the feel of the late 16th and early 17th centuries by writing these novels, and that she wrote them in order to learn. Ordinary historical research, the reading of the documents, was only a beginning; the more important part of her learning, it is clear, came as her characters took form and motion. What clay and what fire make a witch? Write a novel, watch, and find out. The method works...
...eloquent. "She was on the side of the executioners," the account says of a young girl, "as children always are." The author knows what the town square of Liège smelted like; she can read the minds of judges three centuries dead. Witchcraft lives, and so does the novel...
...basic situation pits a politically ambitious but honest California district attorney against an idealistic, pipe-smoking lawyer who is defending a bookseller accused of selling obscene matter. The matter in question is The Seven Minutes, a novel that records the thoughts of a woman while she is enjoying intercourse. "Filth!" cry the D.A., the church and civilian smut-busters. "Art," intones the defense and assorted experts. "Shame," says the reader who recognizes that Wallace fails to show an awareness of the 1966 Supreme Court ruling on Fanny Hill. The decision stated that a book offending community standards could be proscribed...