Word: sin
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Early in the 20th century, the sternly preachy anthologies called McGuffey's Eclectic Readers faded out of the American classroom. Ever since, many elementary-school teachers have been stumped by the problem of instructing pupils in moral themes without committing the modern sin of sermonizing...
...Sin or Art? In 1842 Gogol published the first part of his greatest work. Dead Souls, a novel that brilliantly exposed a brutal anachronism of Russian life: serfdom. Serfs, like any other property, could be mortgaged. Gogol introduced a sort of Russian spiv who speculated in "dead souls,'' i.e., defunct but still financially negotiable persons...
Perfume of Sanctity. Least flattering of all is the portrait Cozzens draws of Marjorie Penrose's proselytizing Roman Catholic friend, Mrs. Pratt. Mrs. Pratt has a sweet tooth for vicarious sins, and she loves the gooey drippings of intimate confidences from flesh-bedeviled souls like Marjorie. About her person she dabs the odor of sanctity as if it were the latest Parisian perfume. But as she prattles of sin and piety in the quiet of Arthur Winner's garden, her innuendoes loose the first of the novel's rockslides of revelation. On the very...
...worked remarkably well in Cozzens' books. The Last Adam etched a memorable portrait of a crusty, lusty New England doctor who serves the Life Drive rather better than he does his patients. Men and Brethren features a tough-minded Episcopal rector who copes with the eternal muddle of sin without sentimentalizing the sinner. The Just and the Unjust, the best U.S. novel ever fashioned around the law, focuses on a small-town murder trial; it illuminates both the law's technicalities and its larger meaning, its limitations and its glories (which are often the same thing). Guard...
...intelligence of Clea, a woman painter. Nessim discusses Justine endlessly; the Irish narrator seeks to define and grasp her attraction. Clea perhaps comes closest when she says: "After all Justine cannot be justified or excused. She simply and magnificently is; we have to put up with her, like original sin...