Word: parr
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...elections for the party presidency, a member who took money from two candidates was called a Nikka in the vernacular of the day: a Suntory took it from three, and an Old Parr was a foxy fellow who took it from all four. Nikka and Suntory are the brand names of Japanese whiskies. Ni means two, sun means three. Imported Old Parr is simply a prestigious brand...
...hero of Open Heart, for instance, a moony young teacher named Antonio Parr, runs up and down his emotional scales several times when he learns that his wife has slept with his young nephew. But there is no real danger that he will follow his impulse and in revenge take his 17-year-old student Laura to bed. In fact there are no real dangers of any kind in Buechner's gentle world. Death, pain and anxiety exist, but are seen small; the hideous, wasting illness that kills Antonio's twin sister at the beginning of Lion Country...
...even in his deepening hysteria for a son, by her husband and King. Finally, we see her as a sick and aged woman, bewildered by events that have taken from her both husband and crown. As Henry's last Queen, Rosalie Crutchley effectively plays a staunch Catherine Parr, a waspish and religious woman with pursed face and stern views on a woman's duty both to Christ and to her husband. Miss Crutchley's Catherine is determined and unyielding as she saves herself from what was becoming the almost inevitable trip to the Tower...
...Bebb is, among other things, a sexual exhibitionist, and there is a memorable scene at the altar of his cinderblock church in which he restores potency to an oil-rich old Indian by raising up his own loins in thanksgiving. Eventually Bebb's more than comely daughter cures Parr of chastity. Nervously and without clear motives, like a man signing up for $400 worth of Great Books, Parr makes a commitment to life. Or to living in lion country. (One of Bebb's stunts is to walk unarmed among rutting lions at a local game preserve...
...reader does not enter Buechner's rarefied world but stands outside admiring. Presently he realizes that Parr, the hero, and Buechner, who invented him, are standing there beside him too. So is all that is visible of Bebb. A conversation develops among the onlookers that is solid, witty and as full of profundity as one could wish for on a hot day. Disbelief is not suspended, but since things are so pleasant, there is no reason that it should...