Word: protagonist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...mood and a character which blend into suspense verging on horror, and is thus the only piece which can claim to draw its reader onward. Yet it achieves this only in the narrative. The technical ease of "how to catch a shark" seems to suit the author and the protagonist, which the stream of consciousness soliloquy at the beginning certainly does not. If Davidson can find a tale which talks through its own logic instead of requiring attempts to explain outside the narrative, he may well become a really successful story-teller. At present, however, his story compels...
...still jars the reader when suddenly, midway through the story, the meditations of the central character are interrupted and those of a virtually un-introduced character are substituted. The main drawback of the story, however, is its dry, unexciting style, which while being appropriate for the character of the protagonist, tends to discourage the reader. Perhaps just a little more verve, if only at the beginning, might make it more enticing. Paula Budlong, the Advocate's stand-by this year, contributes her usual polished story. This one is less grotesque, more subtle and indirect than her previous pieces...
Moreover, the failure of religious sensibility is involved with a painful lapse of taste. The protagonist of the piece is not just any clergyman, but is plainly modeled on Hungary's Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty. In passing its judgment on the imaginary cardinal, the film implies a judgment-before all the facts are in-on the real one. The moviegoer is thus left with the highly unpleasant sensation that somebody is turning a fast buck on the cardinal's misfortunes...
...theme dominates all the others. How great, he asks, is the responsibility of each man for the welfare of his fellows? The answer to this overwhelming question is a dramatized version of the biblical Golden Rule, set as a costume piece during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The protagonist of the play is a brash but cowardly deserter from the Hungarian army who takes refuge in the home of his former mother-in-law. That lady, a countess and sort of philosophical fairy godmother, teaches him what he should have learned in Sunday school and provides him with a brand...
...printer, Clinton died. Now published for the first time, it seems doubtful that Englishmen of his own generation would have found it more convincing than it seems today. Simply as history, it is a fascinating look at the War of the Revolution through the eyes of a British protagonist. But it is almost equally fascinating, flossy style and all, as an unconscious giveaway of character weakness, an inadvertent confession of a general who planned much and acted little, almost passively accepted defeat from a rabble in arms and left the final explanation to his persecution complex...