Word: prose
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Born a Jew (his great-grandfather was a rabbi), Picard became a Roman Catholic in 1939. But long before his conversion, his writings reflected a Christian horror of the divided and uncertain world around him. Often more emotional than logical, they are written in German in a tense prose-poetry that is hard to translate. Now, with the publication in the U.S. of Picard's most famous book, The Flight from God (Henry Regnery; $2.50), U.S. readers get a look at the essence of Max Picard's philosophy...
...Williams of course did not actually read from the books. He flowed effortlessly over the grotesque, oddly-shaped lumps that are Dickensian prose, and he languished nostalgically with the magical Dickensian names, which are so much moreconnotative than denotative: "Mr. Podsnap," "Mr. Bob Sawyer," "Mr. Chops," "Monseigneur." He literally threw himself into the performance, with movements and gestures which seemed just what the author intended, and his voices were superb, whether he was the narrator, the young fop, the chauvinistic Englishman, the crotchety landlady, the Marquis, or the signal...
...hundred thousand knows the name of the remarkable, gnomelike promoter without whom Buffalo Bill would never have existed. The Great Rascal is Ned Buntline's first full-dress biography, and the galloping glitter of his career more than makes up for the limping prose in which Author Monaghan describes...
Delicate Fireworks. The best of the three is Jean Stafford's The Catherine Wheel. In two previous books, Boston Adventure and The Mountain Lion (TIME, Jan. 22, 1945 & March 10, 1947), Novelist Stafford failed in her themes but established herself as probably the best young prose writer in the U.S. In her new book, the manner is still fine, but the matter is thinner than ever. The heroine of The Catherine Wheel is Katharine Congreve, rich, lovely, kind and altogether admirable. Her problem is a not uncommon one, in or out of fiction: in her late 30s and unmarried...
...whole thing is settled during a summer when the Shipleys are in Europe and Katharine has the children at her house in Maine. In prose that is gracious, sensuous and only occasionally selfconscious, Author Stafford deals with Katharine's emotional wrestle, the special despair of young Andrew Shipley, life in the big house, the crotchety local characters. But when Katharine is burned to death in a fireworks display, the tragedy is merely shocking, not moving. The Catherine Wheel is an exercise in literary grace, so delicate that the characters and problems it creates go up with the final fireworks...