Word: reptilian
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...Equally Reptilian. The postprandial sale was 43 modern works from the collection of Belgian Industrialist Philippe Dotrement. Adding a fillip to the occasion was the first appearance as auctioneer of Peter Wilson, the 6-ft. 4-in. chairman of Sotheby's of London, who last year bought out Manhattan's Parke-Bernet. Wilson suavely built up the prices with Etonian aplomb. "You have to act like a croupier in a casino," he had explained beforehand. "Not a flash. Not a flicker...
...must look equally reptilian." His fangs proved golden. An Arp marble brought $26,000, more than treble its previous high in a major auction house. Equally, two Calder mobiles went for $9,000 and $10,000 (v. $2,400). Miro fetched $57,500 (v. $30,000). Even a newcomer like Robert Rauschenberg garnered a record $15,000 for his 1956 Gloria. In all, the collection brought $510,000, making the total for the evening $2,855,000. "This is a record for a sale of modern art in the Western hemisphere," proudly announced Parke-Bernet. "It was a Roman orgy...
...begins with an abrasively effective encounter between two ex-schoolmates who loathe each other. One is a Roman Catholic cardinal (Eric Berry), not remotely a lamb of God but one of the fatted kine of the clerical Establishment. The other is a lawyer (William Hutt), a man of cool, reptilian venom with a hint of Mephistopheles in his brief beard and black-magical manner. They goad each other with insults, and the cardinal muses malevolently on how the lawyer got his school nickname, "Hyena." "Did we not discover about the hyena that it was a most resourceful scavenger? . . . that...
...made clear in the semi-autobiographical novel Meeting at the Last Judgment, which he wrote after his escape. In his latest novel, he broadens his scope somewhat. The narrator is again a Rumanian writer and well-placed party intellectual, plotting escape to the West and caught up in the reptilian intrigues that are the implacable condition of life near the top of one-party dictatorships. But the central character is a friend of his, Sebastian lonescu, whose life provides a large-scale map of all the circles of Iron Curtain hell...
...four debauchees in their twenties who, in various Combinations want to seduce each other and corrupt an already confused undergraduate named Achilles (John Kemp). Gentry Sanger, our host for the evening, is a notorious faggot who "oozes into Widener" to pick up new boyfriends. Paul Schmidt plays him with reptilian smoothness. He wriggles and postures and drawls through airy marvels of sinister affectation. He is the devil in drag. His counterpart Ann Timmons (Joanna Vogel) coldly pursues men. She snatches up innocent victims like Achilles, inflames them and casts them off. Ann is supposed to be bitchy, but Miss Vogel...