Word: woes
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...Nameless Woe. In a new paperback called The Gospel According to Peanuts (Knox; $1.50), Short contends that the cartoon, whose creator is a lay preacher in the Church of God of Anderson, Ind., is a modern variety of prophetic literature, full of useful parables for the times. For example, "the doctrine of original sin is a theme constantly being dramatized in Peanuts." When Charlie Brown gloomily confides to Linus that he has "been confused right from the day I was born," he sums up the "nameless woe" that is at the heart of man's predicament...
...sole action of the play is a state senatorial inquiry into a case of child buying, in which a parade of witnesses relate their roles in the affair. This woe fully static device comes down to describing the play that isn't there. Along the way, Shyre and Hersey plunk paper bullets into pre-perforated targets-the jargon of educationists, the corrupting TV-loot mentality, the jingoistic powerelites of government, business and education. There is one brief moment of absurdly human pathos when the boy himself (Brian Chapin) agrees to go with the child buyer in the hope that...
...hilarious Luv. Sorry-I-was-ever-born plays now sound like hollow parodies rather than dour profundities; since Luv raised its satirical whoop, playgoers are bound to lessen their self-commiserating indulgence of misery. More than ever a playwright who intends to woo his audience with some tale of woe will have to do it out of an intensely felt, intensively rendered personal experience...
MARGUERITE OSWALD, 57, the assassin's mother, lives in Fort Worth and wallows in woe and self-pity. She still insists shrilly that her son did not murder Kennedy alone, says: "I think Lee was a patsy. I think President Kennedy was a victim of people in the State Department." She complains that she has been taken by money-grabbing writers who gleaned information from her, then "didn't even send me $10." She asks, "Why shouldn't there be as much sympathy for me as the President's family? After all, my son was murdered...
...plot is a shoestring. A beatnik's beatnik, Harry Berlin (Alan Arkin), is poised for a suicidal leap. Up comes natty Milt Manville (Eli Wallach), who recognizes him as a onetime classmate at Poly-Arts U. They swap case histories. Harry tells a tale of existential woe that started when a fox terrier mistook his pant leg for a hydrant: "I was nauseous, sick to my soul, I became aware . . . aware of the whole rotten senseless stinking deal." Mimed in outrageously funny fashion by Alan Arkin, Harry is so sick that he goes momentarily rigid with paralysis and then...