Word: sanctums
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...Human Factor, Greene's 22nd novel, combines the shadow world of spies and the games they play with a pervasive spiritual malaise. Secret codes and assassination by peanut-mold toxin entice the reader into the author's gloomy inner sanctum. As usual, the workmanship is superb-almost too good. At times the novel reads as if Greene had entered a Graham Greene write-alike contest. The principal character is British Intelligence Agent Maurice Castle-a surname that pointedly suggests the guarded and lonely aspects of both the man's profession and character. The settings include the nondescript...
...other folks besides. John F. Kennedy Jr., who neglected to drop his name, was turned away. Aspiring Starlet Sunny Leigh, who claims that club personnel kept her outside the inner sanctum "violently and with great force," is suing Studio 54 for a cool $13 million. Even Dallas Cowboy Defensive End Harvey Martin, the terror of the Super Bowl, was stopped at the door. Now that's selectivity. Or a death wish...
Nostalgia is a fine thing, but Fenway Park, once the quaint sanctum of the national pastime, now has a snazzy electronic instant replay board to keep the spectators from missing anything and moving baseball caps to keep pitchers from walking. Fans can lament the passing of real grass and the batting pitcher, but the Grand Old Game has gone the route of Playboy; the magazine is still around, but the presentation is not quite the same. This is show-biz, folks, less rehearsed and manipulated than TV or the movies, but big-time mass entertainment...
...executive, who is 44, seems a perfect choice for tandem harness with Paley. Brash Arthur Taylor had a homing instinct for the limelight; he could not be trusted to refrain from redecorating Paley's castle. But Backe is unassuming, efficient, extremely bright and content to be an inner-sanctum manager. "It isn't a matter of my letting Bill influence me," says he. "I do take his advice and we agree on most things." Backe cannot be called a CByes-man, adds one executive, "but he'd be insane if he'd start bucking Paley...
...there never was really any chance that incisive criticism or debate really would invade our great Sanctum of Superficiality. It would have been worse than sacriligious; it would have spoiled all the fun--you know, all the traditional fellow-felling. (We read Meredith's lips during the show calling Robards a "Greenwich Village fruit who promotes himself anyway he can, if you get my meaning.") That's what it looked like to us, at least...