Word: roald
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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However, with the exception of such proven masters of the sharply written, razor-edged tale as John Collier, Roald Dahl, and Saki, few of Hitchcock's authors can both write well and create an intriguing situation or plot. The book's first few selections are rather dull cases in point, and make an unfortunate beginning for an anthology. The editor's idea of arranging authors in reverse alphabetical order is perhaps commendably simple, but hardly functional for anyone who reads more than one story at a time. In this case the arrangement leads to a most uninviting first fifty pages...
This was not an isolated case, for several other boys were also summoned to explain their criticisms. K. Roald Bergethon, dean of the college, explained that he called up two or three boys last year for various reasons, but "not primarily because they wrote a critical letter." He said he was mainly interested in finding out exactly what the complaint was so he could understand it better. Labovitz agreed that Bergethon seemed sincerely interested in solving problems, but he criticized the other deans for "rapping him (Labovitz) on the knuckles." At any rate, a dean would have to be somewhat...
...their search for solid grounds, the students have not surrendered their right to criticize, nor do they seem any more susceptible than their parents to blind acceptance of dogma. As a matter of fact, says Kaare Roald Bergethon, dean of the college at Brown University, the students seem so tolerant of the beliefs of others that "if I had seen this same phenomenon in the '30s, I would have thought it was indifference, but today I know it isn't." This tolerance has meant that old gods have not been dethroned; they have merely been demoted. "Science students...
...Honeys (by Roald Dahl) tells of despotic, irascible twin brothers (both played by Hume Cronyn) married to pleasant, long-suffering wives. It then tells how the wives (Jessica Tandy and Dorothy Stickney) decide that it would greatly improve matters if they disposed of their husbands. Disposing of them requires a stalled elevator, tainted oyster juice, a skull-bopping with a frozen leg of lamb, and a medicinal drink containing tiger's whiskers; but the ladies are very happily widowed...
...imagine, however, that playwright Roald Dahl is so unoriginal as to use arsenic for his murder weapon. Mary and Maggie Honey are far above such prosaity. When they dispatch their husbands it is by more subtle methods, like poisoning them with oysters or with the chopped-up whiskers of a tiger, or hitting them over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. This last method is particularly fortunate, for it subsequently allows the ladies-in a suitably festive spirit, and accompanied by two policemen-to cat the murder weapon...