Word: robinsons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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HOUSEKEEPING by Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Straus & Giroux 219 pages...
...outside while a hidden, perhaps unimaginable life transpires behind drawn shades or yellowing lace curtains. A home haunted by its occupants fascinates the neighbors and many, many writers; the phenomenon crops up from Poe to Faulkner to Harper Lee and beyond. That last category now includes Author Marilynne Robinson. Her unsettling first novel deals with the fall of yet another house, but from an unusual vantage. The story is told by an insider who helps pull down the roof...
Sylvie and Ruth are passive, quicksilver characters, prone to skittering off at a hint of pressure. Having created wraiths without motives or accountable pasts, Author Robinson left herself a big problem: how to nudge them through a plot, make them interesting, worthy of attention, when they seem so indifferent about themselves. She solved it with language. Ruth's narrative is as colorful as she is pal lid. For a self-confessed dreamer with a tenuous hold on reality, she shows a keen sense of the here and now, and of the right words to record it. She notices...
Stories plainly marked "Made in preoccupied New York" include Leonard Michaels' Robinson Crusoe Liebowitz, a frenetic piece of scatology turning on the inaccessibility of a toilet; Renata Adler's Brownstone, tartly amusing observations from a Manhattan building; and Woody Allen's brilliantly executed The Kugelmass Episode. In search of a love affair, an unhappily married humanities professor from City College hooks up with a magician with the power to transport people into the novel of their choice. Professor Kugelmass chooses Madame Bovary and makes repeated visits to Yonville for trysts with Emma. The miracle has side effects...
Linebackers Frank Lemaster and Bill Bergey, seasoned veterans, are vicious. But the key to the Eagle defense is lightning-quick Jerry Robinson, perhaps the best defensive player in the NFC--or best overall--this year. Built to cope with the explosion in passing offense in the NFL over the last few years, Robinson is an omnipresent force...