Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hoedown. On top of this, Oscar Hammerstein II dipped his big toe in the Mississippi mud and wrote some lyrics that should be thrown back to the catfish. Fortunately, he also supplied a book that is considerably better than the original libretto, with a shift of the plot to Jacksonville, Fla., and into high colloquial gear...
When Joe gets out of the guardhouse, Carmen gets the poor boy into hot water again, and leaves him to stew in it while she joins the camp-following of Husky Miller (Joe Adams), the heavyweight champ. The green-eyed monster takes care of the rest of the plot...
THIRTY YEARS, by John Marquand (466 pp.; Little, Brown; $5). The plot line of this three-decade collection of short stories (plus a few nonfiction pieces of reminiscence) is familiar: boy meets code, boy breaks code, code breaks boy. The codes are Boston and family, club and army. After a bout of spiritual beachcombing, the slightly disenchanted heroes generally return to pukka grace. Boston is the city Marquand almost hates to love, but love it he must-though he is not above shaking his own family tree for laughs. Most of the fiction was written for big-circulation magazines...
...build a railroad bridge. Huffing and puffing about the Hague convention, he whips his Tommies into that task with all his narrow heart and soul, in order to set an example to "these savages." He never realizes that he is really helping the enemy. In his suspenseful, violent plot, French Novelist Boulle suggests that this particular war is fought not between East and West but between common sense and Blimpery. In the end, Blimp wins, but at a high price: he dies, crushed by a white man's burden that was too heavy...
...weaknesses are most evident when it turns half-heartedly to criticism and attempted explications of his novels as it does with A Fable in the last chapter. Here, after outlining the complex plot of the book and commenting on its obvious aspects, Coughlin rather despairingly admits his incapacity to treat it fully or even profitably. "The heavy burden of symbolism of A Fable doubtless will keep Faulkner scholars busy for many years to come. . . The book, on the whole, seems demented...