Word: pleasants
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...kind of coda the old gaffer's kin arrive at his chateau to help him celebrate his birthday. One now sees the raw material he has been working with. If none of his family has genius, or even an excess of individuality, they all appear to be rather pleasant people, undeserving of the imaginary treatment they have received. The audience is left once again -and once too often-to speculate on the gap between reality and illusionary art, and on the widely alleged necessity for the artist to behave inhumanely. These gaseous themes have preoccupied the literary mind, determined...
Once again last December a delegation arrived for talks, as usual led by Mr. Ellsworth Bunker, the former ambassador to Vietnam: they stayed for the inside of a week on the pleasant tourist island of Contadura where it had become a habit to hold such parleys, then they went home...
...usual" and the "pleasant tourist island" say it all. As in most of Greene, corruption is taken for granted. Greene rises above indignation to complacency. Once a man, or a nation, has supped with the devil, he seems to say, it only takes a lapse of will to become his regular drinking partner...
...then a small girl, probably ten or less, darted into the bar. She composed herself, then marched up calmly to the first table and began in a flat monotone, How many delicious candy bars will you buy made so fine (they melt in your mouth) especially for the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church of Wichita Kansas girls' track team. She droned on for about a minute, looking expectant. She repeated the litany three or four times, but nobody was buying...
...Ingmar Bergman looks like a Levine caricature of himself. His face is a series of exaggerated downward thrusts-from the sloping hooded lids of his gray eyes to the long beaked nose and long chin. Although usually smiling and pleasant, he demands exact preparation and painstaking orderliness. He is on a first-name basis with each member of his German crew, and they with him. Hand-picked as the best film technicians in Germany, they both fear and adore the Swedish director...