Word: pryor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tanksgiving Day. Near Pryor, Okla., after discovering that somebody was stealing gasoline from drums on his farm, crafty Elmer Southern filled them with water, was rewarded a few days later by seeing three boys pushing their car on a nearby road, called the sheriff to come and nab the crooks...
...narrators, Joe Sharon, an alcoholic prison counselor, and Hastel Desai, a diabetic inmate. This method creates a bifocal picture of Southern State Penitentiary at Creighton and its chief inhabitants, the most important of whom is "the treatment man," an assistant warden and psychologist who is symbolically named Pryor. Also called the Messiah, he is a vaguely evangelical figure with a jade ring and an MG, who keeps most of the inmates under his Freudian thumb. As the story flickers between Convict Desai and Counselor Sharon, it is clear that there are flaws in Psychologist Pryor's penmanship...
Convict Kinney and Psychologist Pryor are in contention for effective control of the prison population. To demonstrate his power, Kinney organizes a prison riot, his pretense being a "good new boy," who has been caught with a potato peeler hidden in a place of maximum security, and been put in solitary. Kinney spreads the word and soon "the less orderly element in this institution" have burned the chapel, organized a tuba and trumpet band around improvised barbecue pits, and taken three guards as hostages...
...These things happen in all progressive movements," muses the habitual criminal, Kinney, and there is gruesome comedy in Pryor's hypocritical proclamation of "a new era of sound interrelationships between inmate and administration in the prisons of America." Novelist Wiegand has effectively told a prickly parable of power and evil, but offers no solutions. He leaves Narrator Sharon with a new "case load," and with everything at dear old S.S.P.C. back to abnormal...
Born. To Lowell Thomas Jr., 33, explorer, photographer, author (Out of This World, 1950), son of the radio commentator, and Mary Taylor Pryor Thomas, 29, his co-traveler: their first son, second child; in Manhattan. Name: David Lowell. Weight...