Word: swamis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Points of View is no potboiler. There are five essays on subjects not precisely calculated to appeal to the old master's usual fans. He writes about the short story, the novels of Goethe, a Hindu swami he once met, three French writers who kept personal and controversial journals, and about the life and writings of Dr. Tillotson, a 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury. A doubtful lot, on the face of it, but Maugham has the easy knack of wringing interest out of all of them. Virtually all of his information is from other books (which he freely admits...
This is a tale about a reluctant swami. The setting is Malgudi, a sleepy little Indian town dedicated to daydreaming nonviolence. One of Malgudi's daydreamers is Raju, an ex-jailbird (minor forgery) who camps on a stone slab near a temple and counts the stars. When a troubled villager says, "I have a problem, sir" and Raju hears him out, the stargazer's career as a swami has begun. Soon he gets credit for every good thing that happens in Malgudi. He repays his followers in doubtful oracular wisdom ("What can a crocodile...
...make it crystal clear," said House Republican Leader Joe Martin after a solemn conference with President Eisenhower, "there is no weakening in our position." Swami Martin was talking about the Administration's struggle for a strong civil rights bill, but his crystal ball was cloudy: the Republican position was, in fact, weakening second by second...
...reconverts turned up. They sat cross-legged on the grass before pig-tailed Brahman pundits for half an hour's chanting of the Vedas, washed themselves with water from the sacred Ganges, and dropped incense on a fire of camphorwood and herbs. "You are again pure," said a swami. "You are once again Hindus...
...past master in the art of living by his wits." At the Dome and Coupole, Montparnasse haunts of the U.S. expatriate, he talked about death and Dostoevsky and was already veering toward the sort of grandiloquent occultism that today qualifies Miller for a career as a Los Angeles swami, should he tire of Big Sur. Perles lovingly records every drink...