Word: themes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...course of the talk about harems, Johnson said playfully that Boswell would make a good eunuch. But when Boswell replied in a similar spirit, Johnson got angry-"though he treats his friends with uncommon freedom, he does not like a return"-and began to expatiate on his impolite theme with "such fluency that it really hurt...
...advantages as a theatre for youthful lovemaking, served as the central figure. Not exactly a novel, Clutch and Differential is by George Weller, whose first book, Not to Eat, Not for Love, published three years ago, was a witty college story laid in his alma mater, Harvard. The elusive theme of his new work is taken from an automobile sales circular: "Bodies never cease changing . . . but power in motor vehicles is still infused at the clutch and discharged through the differential. Beneath American-made bodies that are tastefully refashioned every year, power transmission has gained a standard performance. New bodies...
...impetuous bridegroom (Would You Marry a College Girl? Yes.) is prefaced with a little monolog about waiting for the delivery of a new automobile. The "differential" story of another young couple (Would You Marry A College Man? No.) begins with factory instructions on breaking in a new car, a theme whose smutty possibilities are as obvious as they are outworn. Some times Weller grinds his gears pretty badly in shifting from one tale to the next; sometimes the transitions are lightly made...
Major weakness of Clutch and Differential is his tendency to ride his theme so hard it becomes burlesque, to cheapen the wit of his stories with sophomoric horseplay...
...will feel that the cards have been hopelessly stacked against them. It is the strangest, longest, least readable, most infuriating and yet in some respects the most impressive novel that William Faulkner has written. At first glance it is so pompous in its language and so ridiculous in its theme that readers accustomed to honest dealing will call at once for a new hand. Its action takes place simultaneously on three levels, and although Author Faulkner includes a map, a chronology and a cast of characters to help keep the sequences clear, they do not help much...