Word: victorian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...GREAT VICTORIAN COLLECTION by BRIAN MOORE 213 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux...
...Victorians, as Chesterton observed, were "lame giants; the strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other." It was an epoch of elegance and kitsch, dignity and pornography, liberal cant and imperial overreach. It is this instability that enlivens-and afflicts-Brian Moore's novel, The Great Victorian Collection...
...witty veneer, the Victorian Collection may be seen as a fable of art at a time when people prefer criticism to novels and autographs to painting. But there is something darker at work here: a claustrophobic sense of a century closing in on possessions, values, souls. It is this aspect that Moore slights. He introduces 19th century complications: an involved, but strangely chaste affair, a faceless enemy, a gaggle of venal sycophants. Then he seems to lose patience with these promising elements, and before 200 pages are out, Maloney hurtles to an abrupt martyrdom. The blueprint remains; the major work...
Upon reading The Great Victorian Collection, Graham Greene praised the author as "my favorite living novelist, [who] treats the novel as a tamer treats a wild beast." The encomium is understandable but slightly out of synch. Like Greene, Moore writes both serious works of art and prinking entertainments. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and Catholics placed Moore in the front rank of contemporary writers. Whatever its intentions, the Collection ends as a Great Victorian Legpull. And pace Greene, this time it is the short limb that is being pulled...
Michael Crichton's THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Knopf; 266 pages; $7.95) happily contributes to the current revival of British imperial style. In Sherlock Holmes reprints, The Great Victorian Collection and innumerable biographies, Victoria Regina rides again. For this intricate mystery, her very nation moves to life. The vowel sounds and alley reeks, the technological detail and social lacunae-all are here, ornamenting a tale based on the celebrated 1850 heist...