Word: swamy
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...familiar path to self-discovery that earlier pilgrims-Aldous Huxley, Maugham himself-have trod before. The hero is Oliver, who, like Isherwood, has become fascinated by Oriental mysticism. He decides to become a monk-a step that Isherwood considered but never took-and goes to India to become a swami. On the eve of the final vow-taking, his elder brother Patrick, a London publisher and one of the most cheerfully decadent characters in recent fiction, appears at Oliver's monastery by the Ganges. Unable to leave so much integrity untouched, Patrick tempts Oliver with prospects of money...
...worst, Cloportes is a squashy but grimly amusing study of insect behavior. At best, it pins down some first-rate talent. France's Singing Idol Charles Aznavour wryly impersonates a crook-turned-cultist whose swami act is last seen floating in the Seine, and Veteran Actress Françhise Rosay rabbets in some surprises as a hardened crone who rents out high-powered burglary tools by the hour. Any doubt that the female is the deadlier of the species is dispelled by shapely Irina Demick, who shows up rather late as an art gallery receptionist all abustle with...
...Collector succeeded because Fowles limited his principal personae to one spider and one fly. The Magus fails because he spins a flimsy, far-flung net of narrative and then gets all tangled up in it. At the center of the tangle is the Magus, a swami-style psychiatrist who owns part of an Aegean isle, stocks it with 30 or 40 of his disciples, and with their help plays Prospero to the unhappy young man who is the novel's narrator. Kill or cure is his intention, and to further it he mounts a colossal psychodrama that takes about...
...they don't spoil it. Besides, most of the cast knows better than to take a musical's plot seriously, and they share the audience's amusement in discovering how easily gulled the Babelites are by slick talk. The gab is dispensed by a down-and-out swami (played by Mr. Morey's collaborator, Robert Paul), who wanders into Babel, promptly sells the Babelites the world, and, to dispose of a bag of cement, persuades them to build a tower commemorating their purchase. Mr. Paul's loquacity dazzles and overwhelms them; the only person he doesn't fool...
Morey and Paul's spoof of dupes and quackery is as broad as Goldfarb's beam, and as incisive a tour de force as you could wish. But as the Swami's Woman would say, don't take anybody's word for it. See for yourself...