Word: sheean
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ORPHEUS AT EIGHTY (372 pp.)-Vincent Sheean-Random House...
Wounds & Distress. Vincent Sheean calls his book Orpheus at Eighty because it recounts Verdi's long life in a series of flashbacks showing the old composer looking back on the struggles and triumphs of his stupendous career. It is Sheean's best book since Personal History (1935), and if its prose could be rid of repetitions and the parentheses that break out half a dozen to the page, it would be the best introduction to Verdi and his music in the English language. Clearly a labor of love, it is at once a fine tribute and a history...
Drawing the Maps. Gunther as a book-journalist lacks the originality and profundity of Rebecca (Meaning of Treason) West, the stylistic graces of Negley (Way of a Transgressor) Farson, John (Hiroshima) Hersey or Vincent (Personal History) Sheean. Yet none matches him for sheer scope, reportorial zest, or, most notably, the gift of popularizing remote places and difficult subjects. Says Critic Clifton Fadiman: "Gunther is a born teacher; he doesn't miss a fact-trick. His books are almost too easy to read; because of that, they seem superficial. But he's taught us a hell...
Though widely hailed as a reporter, Gunther is at least as good a rewrite-man. He can take widely scattered strands of information-from books, statistics, official reports, newspaper clippings-and weave them into a pattern that is not only meaningful but brightly his own. Says "Jimmy" Sheean: "He is no mere compiler, for all his massive array of facts. He has repeatedly proved readable to a degree which no assembly of facts could explain. The zest with which he relishes his material gives it the breathless flavor of discovery every time, even aside from the liveliness of the writing...
...home the world's best European coverage. From such resident and visiting firemen as the New York Evening Post's Dorothy Thompson. I.N.S.'s late H. R. Knickerbocker (who once interviewed Stalin's mother), the Chicago Tribune's William (Berlin Diary) Shirer, and Author Sheean, Correspondent Gunther busily soaked up lore and legends that never made the news stories. Gunther's most valuable mentor: the New York Evening Post's M. W. (''Mike") Fodor, dean of Balkan correspondents, who helped the young Chicagoan so generously that fellow newsmen later dubbed Inside...