Word: portraited
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Marquez claims he prepared to write the book by collecting all the true anecdotes about South American dictators that he could find, though, he adds, he purposely forgot them all before he put words on paper. Nevertheless, his portrait of the general seems uncannily true to life as well as to art; and it is precisely the vividness of Garcia Marquez' vision that makes his book so frightening, sad, funny, immediate...
Marquez is not merely rooting for "we" vs. "he." Autumn is not a historical picture of a nation oppressed by a man, but a portrait of a man oppressed by his desire for power, finding himself in his old age alone with remembrances of things past...
Bass and DeVries do not sketch the background quite that way. Not that they don't agree; they're just more interested in how the foregoing portrait of Southern politics has shattered since the post-war ascendance of economic development and black equality. Southern politics rested, until the last few years, on a consensus of sorts between upper and lower class whites: most white political leaders did nothing to eradicate the inefficient small holdings of poor white farmers, nor did they try to diminish the privileges of poor whites in general versus blacks. For their part, the mass of Southern...
This conclusion, inconclusive and yet fast on the heels of the ultimate skirmish of psychological cruelty, leaves us with half a film, for one presumes that after throwing her hands up at suicide Mrs. Elliot will have to come to terms. The portrait of her, ending here, strikes one as perverse and, although meant to arouse sympathy, pretty unsympathetic. The children, at least, might provide Roberts with a vocation and some joy--even Finney has grown to appreciate them, and remarks perfectly "I'm happier with them because I'm happier without them." Yet she declares herself ready to drag...
...more sequence would have rendered this desolate tale more humane and, I think, more complete. Perhaps not the sort of rediscovered affection that caps off Portrait of a Marriage, but maybe a glimpse into the middle seventies when through, say, a feminist sharing group, Mrs. Elliot would have the chance to communicate her despair with other ex-wives in the same aimless, professionless bind. One hopes so, at least, because she can't sit and stare at the symbolic wallpaper forever...