Word: tales
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hollywood version of the Holiday story is no better. A spindly, cliché-ravaged tale of the sorrows of show biz, Lady Sings the Blues stars Diana Ross, former lead singer of the Supremes. That is a casting coup about as appropriate as signing up Sammy Davis Jr. to play Charlie Parker. It is eerie to watch and listen to Miss Ross, the princess of plastic soul, work her way through such songs as Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child. She has the phrasing, and the Holiday intonation. What she doesn't have is the passion. Her Billie...
...such socialist conclusions, although to him the continual "meaning of life" is even more sacred than to de Beauvoir. He draws no conclusions at all. Not compromising the simplicity of presenting things as they are he thereby forces his audience to form its own judgements. Ozu tells an unadorned tale of old age and generational conflict, which awards the ultimate victory to the sacrificed rather than the sacrificers, and shows us not life's parody but life's beauty...
Herbert Gold, now 48, is sticking with the process to the bittersweet end. His story, Heart of the Artichoke (1951), with its rich portrait of the tough Cleveland grocer modeled on Gold's own father, is a classic of J.A. fiction. But by the time Gold recut his tale in Fathers (1967), the material had worn badly. In My Last Two Thousand Years, Gold drops all pretense of storytelling and joins the decolletage school of literary autobiography: revealing just enough to entice the reader into turning the pages, even after it becomes apparent that the author will never satisfactorily...
...which a certain number of charts are provided). But in this book as in the Orient, a little discipline is the way to enlightenment. Any reader who can respond, for example, to Chekhov's plays will rise to the austere, autumnal nobility in Kawabata's tale...
CHIMERA, a collection of three novellas pursues this latter trail. The first story Dunyazadiad is Barth's version of the thousand and one Arabian nights. Traditionally, you may remember the tale goes as follows. Shahryar, king of Samarkand, has been deceived in love. Resolving that woman is a weak and sinful creature, he decides on an elaborate punishment which includes his personal deflowering of a virgin every night and her execution the following morning. After a time, Scheherezade's turn arrives. To foil the king's designs, she begins a story that first evening but stops before its conclusion, promising...