Word: realisms
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WHAT HAS PERHAPS been most disappointing in American writers since World War II has been their fear of dirtying their novelistic hands by getting too close to reality. So there has been a general tendency to retreat into myth or parody or the kind of halfway realism that takes place in the suburbs of reality. But Pynchon and Updike, in their last books, have thrown themselves into the ugly, unpoetical stuff of this society in these times. They are making novels out of sex and racism, hamburger stands, dope dealing, babysitting and used cars, moon shots and television sets...
THOSE PEOPLE who worried at the time that Carpenter Center was to become an "adult nursery school" with lots of courses in "finger-painting" were appeased. Emotional release would not be tolerated. And realism was effectively nixed due to the influence of the Bauhaus. "Everything was to be scientific, nothing emotional," recalls James S. Ackerman, professor of Fine Arts and a member of the CPVA. Harvard would teach a language of vision, nothing more. According to Sekler, "In 1960 it seemed the most valid way of going about...
...side of social realism, there's an attempt at describing what the editors call "The Pre-Med Subculture." I'm still not sure whether the author's final judgment is that some pre-meds are always "obnoxious and overbearing," or whether all pre-meds are sometimes "obnoxious and overbearing...
James Jones has switched from agued realism to a thriller, set in the isles of Greece. "The taxi," Jones' first sentence begins in A Touch of Danger, "roared around the last cloverleaf of a new road and slid in against the high curb like a scared baserunner with his cleats bared." California's Ross Macdonald, who was crowned with olives by New York critics for The Underground Man (1971), has obligingly written his usual highly polished existential mystery once more. This time the title is Sleeping Beauty, and naturally the book hinges on a 25-year-old murder...
...PLAY is more than just a gimmick. Mrozek expands on the absurd situation with dialogue that is eerie because of its casual tone of day-to-day realism. In the short time we spend with them, we develop definite feelings about Mr. I and Mr. II. Through their comments, even the Hand acquires a distinct personality ("Somebody's fingernails could use a good cleaning, if I may venture an opinion," comments...