Word: peccadillos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...with several of the stories pivoting around two youngsters named Jason and Ira Garrett. In Chip Canary, Jason tangles with the town queer woman, Elizabeth Minerva Stretch. She is a monstrous frump, always trundling a baby carriage full of junk and dubbed-for some shadowy peccadillo of the past-"Chip Canary." In a moment of adolescent bravado Jason yells out this taboo nickname, then breaks and runs. That night, snug in bed, Jason smiles as he hears his father say to his mother: "He's big enough, now, to take care of himself. Whatever he does...
...theatrical narcotic, and both Wilder and director Tyrone Guthric almost inhale too much of the stuff. Having written the play expressly for Ruth Gordon in the role of Mrs. Levi, the author has given her too many lines that depend on dialect alone. Guthrie has compounded the peccadillo by letting Miss Gordon maintain her rasping voice too loud for too much of the time. The result, especially when Loring Smith is sharing the scene as the booming and gesticulating Vandergelder, is a shouting match that numbs the audience and detracts from those scenes wherein pandemonium reigns legitimately...
Augie's peccadillo reforms him. He is soon spending days in the unaccustomed pursuit of earning a living, and nights in his own bed. Before long, he qualifies for adoptive fatherhood. Then, to his horror, the agency gives him his own child. For a while poor Augie sees himself cast as a tragic Greek hero being buffeted by Fate, but a surprise ending enables him to become a normal, happy commuter buffeted only by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad...
...Once, when the Sultan sent male servants to flog some women for "a peccadillo," the men "were conquered by their charms and, tossing aside the implements of torment, subjected the pretty victims to a more tender treatment." The monarch found them in flagrante delicto; the women were whipped while the Sultan laughed at their screams, then thrown into foul cells, where they were kept on starvation rations. The men were also whipped and then chained to the walls of their cells. All twelve were released when Ben Youssef was deposed as Sultan. Previous victims of similar punishments died in their...