Word: tales
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Roth is by no means a shoddy craftsman, but he ought not to be read too critically. He communicates indirectly, and if we focus on apparent awkwardness we miss the point. He makes us keep our distance, yet be involves us in his tale more fully that the sharpest plot-maker. The hideous din of a guilty thought, the whirling of noise and action about a point in time, a sense of inexplicable release--all these Roth evokes with mysterious ease. Call It Sleep is a quiet masterpiece that grows in the mind even after one puts it down...
Signs of Decadence. No one can quarrel with the facts that Dame Rebecca presents, and there is no one who tells a better tale of espionage. The quarrel is with the "meaning" she assigns this espionage. Because Klaus Fuchs is a scientist and intellectually arrogant, she suggests that all scientists are peculiarly prone to treason. Because most of the traitors did not be lieve in God, she suggests that Communism or Nazism is the only alternative to faith in God. She is perfectly correct in charging the West, and Great Britain in particular, with egregious laxity in letting Communist spies...
...began as a tale of two deadlines. By far the more important was set by Charles de Gaulle, who had stipulated that the Six must achieve a joint grain price by Dec. 15-or else France might pull out of the Common Market. At Brussels last week, his deadline was met to the day, and while this was a victory for De Gaulle, it was also a major victory for Europe (see following story). The other deadline had been set against De Gaulle's opposition by the U.S., which had insisted that by year's end, or early...
Christmas has hazards as well as joys, and some of them are subtle poisons, says the National Safety Council. One old wives' tale holds that a tea brewed of mistletoe leaves or berries* is good for the circulation. Far from it, says the council:the tea can ruin even an adult's circulation to the point of killing him. A likelier danger from the floral decorations of a contemporary Christmas is that a youngster will pull off and chew one of the pretty, pointed green leaves of a poinsettia plant. These contain an acrid juice that can also...
Demy not only risks the commonplace, he makes simplicity almost a fetish, disarms the audience with ingenuousness. Like a kid with a handful of bright new crayons, he scrawls his sadly cynical fairy tale across the shabby landscape of the town. Through his eyes Cherbourg becomes a city of promise done up in candy-box decor, where every shopfront, boudoir and corner bistro has been daubed with gentle pastels or vibrant reds, yellows, pinks, blues. This is the way things ought to be, he wistfully suggests, not yet faded with the passing seasons into the greyness of things as they...