Word: tales
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pieces of Ivory. The book was a critical success. It was a mannered, exotic tale about a circle of aristocrats "so powerful and exclusive that . . . Romans refer to them with bated breath." ("Tell Mr. Wilder," said one of the high-born ladies with some amusement, "that we are not really so interesting.") The book was a precocious effort of a precocious young man, groping for something as yet beyond his powers. He hinted that his characters were ancient gods in modern dress, and that one minor figure was a portrait of Keats. In effect, Wilder had bundled Rome...
Hans Christian Andersen. Producer Sam Goldwyn's lavish musical fairy tale about Denmark's great spinner of fairy tales; with Danny Kaye, French Ballerina Jeanmaire (TIME...
...Children's Hour (by Lillian Hellman) is still, after 18 years, vivid and powerful. Into her tale of a child's fiendish lie that shatters tbe lives of two young schoolmistresses, Playwright Hellman packed a great deal of sheer vibrant theater. But for all the child's whispered charges of Lesbianism and her grandmother's shouted ones, The Children's Hour is something more than shocking, as it is something more than tense. Despite its heightened stage qualities, it cuts sharply back into life-to the monstrous power of gossip, to the sick, psychopathic nature...
...kindliest tale, Yam Gruel, Akutagawa turns philosopher. A middle-aged samurai lives only for his annual sip of yam gruel, his favorite delicacy. When he finally gets a chance to gorge himself, the mere idea satiates him. ("Aman sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life...
Hans Fallada was one of those writers whose books bounce back from the Bank of Posterity stamped "Insufficient Funds." He made the international bestseller lists in the early '30s with Little Man, What Now?, a famously sentimental tale of a harassed bookkeeper whose whimpers found echoes all over a Depression-hounded world. But his talent was timely rather than timeless; moreover, in his native Germany, Fallada and his symbolic "Little Man" pinned their hopes on Hitler, and it turned out to be a luckless choice for both. Fallada's books were pronounced "undesirable" by the Nazis...