Word: simpleton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...time of his brother's death in 1944, Singer had become a recognized writer-but only to readers of a dying language. One of them was a young novelist named Saul Bellow, who translated Singer's tale, Gimpel the Fool, the story of a village simpleton transfigured by the belief that the next world "will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception." Remembers Singer: "This story brought me so much popularity-somehow I have the strange feeling that all the literary people in America read that one issue of Partisan Review...
...shared sense of degradation drives an abused prostitute (Eva Mattes) into Stroszek's well-meaning embrace, but the alcoholic simpleton can offer her little protection against the periodic brutality meted out by two utterly depraved pimps who enjoy yanking her around Stroszek's flat by her frizzed hairs. A whimsical old man (Clemens Scheitz) turns up with the all-too-familiar notion of moving to the United States to escape the misery, and this implausible threesome sets off together in search of The Better Life. Predictably enough, their Midwestern El Dorado proves as illusory as Aguirre...
...provisional wing of the I.R.A. Mum is Mayo, who has ties to the Provos, a callow sense of Realpolitik and a Flemish masterpiece that she stole from a London museum. The kiddies are Murf, an idiot savant at wiring up explosives, and his girl friend Brodie, a pert little simpleton who totes bombs to their destinations...
...Everding has an almost TV-like fondness for "closeups," achieved through the use of solo spotlights. At key moments, Everding darkens the stage and picks out a character with a single spot. Isolating Boris at the end of the coronation scene is brilliant stagecraft. But giving the Simpleton a solo spot in the forest clearing, at the opera's end, is mere staginess...
...Idaho. Still, for 30 years he has quietly written long, uncompromising and cerebral novels. Voss (1957), a study of a German exploring the Australian interior frontier, shimmered with metaphysical mirages. With desert-dry irony, The Solid Mandala (1966) considered the lives of twin brothers, respectively a librarian and a simpleton, and praised feeling at the expense of intellect. Three years ago, in The Vivisector, he produced an ambitious account of an artist who coldly rejects life whenever it impinges upon his work. White himself is an intensely private man who lives in Sydney with several dogs and a male housekeeper...