Word: tales
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...amusement as well as seriousness when the impetuous Simon finds himself for all the ages called 'The Rock' . . . ? Christians have puzzled for centuries over the unjust judge and the fraudulent steward, afraid to acknowledge that the divine Lord can point a serious moral with a lighthearted tale...
...jape that was cribbed from a 1940 movie, a comedy called Too Many Husbands, which in turn was borrowed from a comedy by Somerset Maugham, who had lifted the theme from a gloomy narrative poem by Tennyson, who had got the idea from a sculptor friend who heard the tale told in Suffolk...
...20th century reader who wishes to feel superior in his shining science to the credulity of the Middle Ages will have an easy time of it. Scholar White insists, however, that a bestiary is no fairy tale, but a serious scientific work with kernels of fact in most of the fantastic legends. The remarkable thing, says White, is not that most of the observations were wildly distorted, but that they were made at all, across continents and centuries. Science aside, who would want to miss the 12th century hedgehog model that "provides itself with double breathing holes, so that, when...
...light mood for Snake Oil, and it is unfortunate that the Band cannot play for tonight's program. The omission will not be disastrous, however; Snake Oil is more than able to stand on its own merits. A collection of unlikely situations and lively songs, Snake Oil is the tale of the Texas oil man, enthusiastically intent on cultivating his daughter and converting Radcliffe into a likeable brewery. The highpoints of the enterprise are the lyrics (Stephen Addiss and Caleb Crowell) and the music by Clarence Chang. Their best song, "Love Is Blind," is a melody of professional quality. Since...
...novel, The Confidence-Man is a near miss, one of those pregnant and provocative failures that prove more rewarding to read than a whole litter of lesser writers' tidy but empty triumphs. Austere and philosophical, it sometimes seems all head and no tale. Despite its dire point of view, the book jests and jostles with life, and really belongs with the sardonic comic charades of Swift, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and Ben Jonson's Volpone. Like them, it is a kind of cosmic hangover suffered by a man who-having drunk overfull of the human race...