Word: tales
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BLACK JACK, by Leon Garfield (Pantheon; $4.50). Resurrected after hanging, Black Jack and a young apprentice begin a wild progress across 18th century England that leads to murder, body snatching, and a love story. A splendid swashbuckling tale...
...Parents' Magazine Press; $3.95). A princess named Bedelia manages to slay a dragon by using a little common sense-and a lot of gunpowder. She also escapes from a prison tower and marries a handsome prince, all because she is practical. A humorous twist on the standard fairy tale with slightly baroque illustrations...
...director like John Ford, if he thought this tedious two-hour tale worth the telling, could have done it in a tight ninety minutes. Leone spends most of his time focusing on the actors' eyes squinting tensely into the camera lens. The intent is operatic, but the effect is soporific. Stuck in this gluepot horse opera, such veteran range hands as Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale and Keenan Wynn struggle helplessly and often hysterically. But the picture, such as it is, belongs to Charles Bronson. A flinty character actor who has appeared in everything from The Great Escape...
...Woman in the Dunes was such a book. Kobo Abé, one of Japan's most important writers, took an absurdist nightmare-the tale of a man's adjustment to life in an escapeless pit-and gave it both mythic reality and a moral power. Abé's The Face of Another, a novel about a chemist with a burnt-out face who attempts to function behind a life mask he has fashioned for himself, is as direct as any contemporary exploration of the identity-crisis theme. The Ruined Map, his newest novel to be translated into...
...Each year the library visiting committee met with us, and each year we told our sad tale. One year, a particular Harvard graduate had written a history of the Supreme Court. He himself was a lawyer. He was particularly well fitted to be long, verbose, tiresome, and pompous. When we told him, as the new chairman of our committee, that we wanted a rare books library, he became indignant and said he thought it was a very poor use of money. In fact, he thought that rare books were utterly useless, and as far as he was concerned, he would...