Word: wilfrid
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...DAYS, the political novel, like politics itself, was a game only professionals played. But in the wake of the "new politics" amateurs like Wilfrid Sheed, former film critic for Esquire, are beginning to write a new brand of political fiction. People Will Always Be Kind is a good example of how this new type fails: like the "new politics" itself, the book is unorganized, self-righteous and too self-consciously concerned with style...
...style political novel rarely concentrated on a single man; it was narrative or panoramic, not analytical. The new politics born in the last decade often seems based on personality, so Wilfrid Sheed's new-style novel is the portrait of one man, Senator Brian Casey. Crippled by polio since the age of 15, Casey turns his deformity into a power base after he discovers that "people will always be kind". But this childhood trauma is the source of Casey's instability as well as his appeal, and eventually leads to his decision to throw away his chances for the Presidency...
...WILFRID SHEED...
...book reviewer of the highest order, and a scorner most subtle, Wilfrid Sheed can light up another man's novel, amuse the children by blowing smoke rings for a quarter of an hour, and then stub out the butt with a gesture so incisive that the wretched author resolves to forswear literature and apprentice himself to a tree surgeon. But Sheed is also a novelist himself, so skilled that a few years ago, in Max Jamieson, he managed to write a strong and eloquent novel whose main character was a critic. The feat was the equivalent of successfully memorializing...
...Club Stakes, and it is a nostal gic delight to have the show in Manhattan. Playwright Home's three central characters are titled racing stewards. Imagine their clubroom pal lor when they discover that a stakes race has been rigged by the wife of the senior board member (Wilfrid Hyde-White). When a priggish socialist peer threatens to expose the affair, this Britannic trio waives the rules and brings the bounder to heel...