Word: stacton
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...write a tragic novel about a man who didn't get a $3 raise. -David Stacton...
Died. David Stacton, 42, U.S. historical novelist; of a stroke; near Copenhagen. Often brilliant, sometimes exasperating, Stacton wrote 13 novels illuminating history's dark corners, from the courts of Pharaoh Ikhnaton (On a Balcony), to 14th century Japan (Segaki), to the assassination of Lincoln (The Judges of the Secret Court). In each, his epigrammatic, sinewy prose evoked the ambiance of an age so effectively that critics rated him one of the best of the postwar crop of American authors...
...Pauline, Napoleon's second sister, generally considered the most likable of the Bonapartes, was a nymphomaniac who, according to Stacton's account, "treated men as she treated clothes: if she did not like them, she wore them only once; if she did, she wore them out." In Auguste de Forbin, a society painter "endowed with a usable gigantism," she found a man who wore her out. To the horror of her husband, Prince Camillo Borghese, she went through money even faster than men, but she always found cash when Big Brother needed it. Were she and Napoleon lovers...
...Aiglon, the only son of Napoleon and Empress Marie Louise, was the principal martyr of the Bonapartist tradition. The child was only four when his father was sent to St. Helena, but it was already clear, says Stacton, that he was "preternaturally intelligent, as precocious as Macaulay or J. S. Mill." In Austria, however, he was placed with tutors who were instructed to retard his development as much as possible. After a few years of repressive treatment, the boy became withdrawn and watchful. At 16, he developed tuberculosis. At 21, ignored by his mother and surrounded by doctors who tried...
...Louis Napoleon, son of Brother Louis, was the second and last of the Bonaparte emperors (L'Aiglon was proclaimed Emperor in 1815, but he never actually ruled). In Stacton's opinion, he was merely "a paper demagogue" who wrote lively pamphlets and had "the dignity of a toy lion." Carried into office on a flood tide of Bonapartism, he soon made it clear that his resemblance to Napoleon was merely nominal. He became a sort of Gallic Coolidge decorated with Continental charm, and he presided over an era of prosperous inanition that collapsed in the debacle...