Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sober. Earnest. Respectful. And, alas, excruciating. There is really little more to be said about Joseph Strick's adaptation of the James Joyce masterpiece. The novel may be this century's greatest restatement of that endlessly fascinating story of a youth in revolt against family, society, culture, religion-everything that formed him. But of course it is not the familiar tale Joyce told, but the manner in which he told it, that compels one's attention and awe. And there is simply no way to construct a film that can contain more than a suggestion...
...also seems that Strick, whose camera technique may be charitably described as primitive, is the wrong man to attempt the task. More than a decade ago, he gave us a Ulysses that suffered from the same dull defects. But there are, at least some inherently cinematic aspects to that novel, and the director's defects did not appear quite so plainly. In Portrait it becomes clear that Strick cannot even handle straightforward dramatic scenes energetically and forcefully. Nor is he very good with actors. Bosco Hogan, who looks the part of Stephen, cannot find the wit, rage and irony...
...conscience flinched. Perhaps some even paused a moment in their diligent march through college to law school--if it's really that bad, is it worth the pain? Several years later, juridical ambition springs anew, however, and John Jay Osborn Jr. '67 is teasing our insecurities again with another novel about the brutal rituals of the law profession. You may make it through Harvard Law, but can you stand the initiation rites of your first year in a prestigious Wall Street firm...
Osborn seems to do nothing more than reuse the ingredients of The Paper Chase for his new novel--a glamorous setting, a love interest, a perceptive but inexperienced protagonist coming up against uncompromising traditions. The Associates reads like a novelization of the bad TV movie which it will undoubtedly become...
...Salim, a coastal African descended from fastidious Indian immigrants, Bigburgers resemble "smooth white lips of bread over mangled black tongues of meat." Salim is the novel's narrator who, like the self-seeding hyacinth, drifts through the swirls of political and social change. The result is a sensitive fictional character with the detachment of an anthropologist...