Word: widowing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...letter writers as unattractive and self-absorbed as possible. He is one of them, thus dryly joining the ranks of the fictitious who think themselves actual, and five of the others either figure in or are suggested by his earlier books. The seventh is Lady Amherst, a fiftyish British widow who has fetched up on the Eastern Shore as a visiting lecturer at a jerk water Maryland college. As the new girl in the book, she commands initial attention and then numbed disbelief. It is not just her Olympian long-windedness that is troubling, but the things she writes...
...group of peasants together. Prayer punctuates their daily lives like the motif in the Bach concerto underscores their joys and sorrows. A woman angrily exhorts the Lord to save the life of her cow; her prayer reprimands a God who would let the only cow of a widow with six children become ill. The Pater Noster becomes a magic spell chanted in Latin by the local healer, and always there are the endless "Ave Marias," with the accent heavily on the Ave, which are brought forth, like my old Irish Grandmother's frequent "Mother of God!" for any occasion...
Kiernan (a journeyman who has written books on such disparate personalities as Yasser Arafat and Jane Fonda) met his subject only twice, and he worked without the direct cooperation of Steinbeck's widow. A more thorough account of the career might have provided a less gloomy view of the man, but it seems doubtful. Steinbeck always feared biography. "Writers," he told Kiernan, "are by their very nature private people, in many cases lonely, frightened, insecure, incapable of relating comfortably to other people." The sentence was pure confessional...
...Painted Bird, Kosinski wandered the villages of Eastern Europe alone while World War II ravaged the continent. Like the idiot of Being There, Kosinski abandoned Europe for the United States, arriving there stupid and mute. And like the heroes of his later novels, he married a fabulously wealthy widow who died six years later leaving him nothing...
Black leaders were pleased by McHenry's appointment. Said Coretta King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr.: "I feel he will be a tremendous asset to our nation. He will continue in the same spirit as Andy in terms of trying to win friends for America." The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was equally enthusiastic. "There may be a change in style from Andy. McHenry won't be as informal, but there won't be a change in the battle for world peace." While more restrained, Jewish leaders also expressed satisfaction...