Word: ardors
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...writer, such fame was unprecedented then, and has been unimaginable since. Not just fame, either, but ardor and devotion. In The World of Charles Dickens, English Novelist Angus Wilson suggests that Dickens, publishing most of his works in serial form, achieved the same intimate, regular contact with his audience as Scheherazade in his childhood favorite, The Arabian Nights. Dickens kept telling another tale. Jokes and fantasies, social and political critiques, plummy visions of Christmas swept from his pen. He even wrote a front-page article in his own magazine, Household Words, to explain and justify the breaking...
...pragmatism, to be sure, has not yet affected much of the nation's life. China's once rich world of culture remains frozen. Exactly eight stage works have been approved for presentation since 1966-five operas, two ballets and one symphony, all of them bristling with revolutionary ardor (sample title: Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy). Not a single new song has been published since the Cultural Revolution. Political indoctrination in saturation quantities is still forced daily on everyone...
...between ethereal consecration and worldly wisdom. But the latter quality is principally conveyed by such lines as "Look, Ma, I'm human," and "Let's follow the monk and see what it eats." After the boy dies of hockey injuries, Martha and the monk consummate their tormented ardor at the foot of the church altar; the scene comes close to unintentional parody of the old de Sadistic monk-and-choirgirl routine...
...dried-out writer, Bech loses some sustaining irony as he gets closer to home. In London, an aggressive young scholar browbeats Bech into explaining his work. A rich young cutie looks up from her pillow and smugly suggests that he "learn to replace ardor with art." Back home, a former student gives him pot and he vomits...
Kouyoumdjian believed in his characters with the ardor of an outsider yearning to be let in. He married a Greek countess, Atalanta Mercati, and called his son Michael Arlen, the nom de plume he had permanently adopted for himself. His daughter he called Venetia-after the heroine of one of his novels. As Michael Arlen, he became a celebrity from Mayfair to Detroit in the days before the word and the condition were tired and devalued. Now his son, a TV critic and essayist, has written a wry and moving but far from fond memoir of his parents. He avoids...