Word: authorization
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...rejected idealist is thus readied for the fleshy pleasures, and the stage is set for one of the author's most durable themes: libertinism and its comic consequences. Columbine matures as a perennial nymph, but she pales beside Snooky von Sickle, the brewery heiress of Wagnerian dimensions with whom Peachum shares many a back seat and shadowy glade. Yet love has its mysteries: when Peachum recalls having made unkind comments about Columbine's "doorbells," he feels a pang of remorse that is followed immediately by a twinge of desire. Peachum's entanglements are due to varying intentions...
...novel itself. First the riches. The book is full of De Vries' happy wordplay, metaphysical Wiffle Balls, witty oxymorons (Peachum describes himself as a "self-pitying stoic") and perversely amusing ironies (a house burns down because of faulty wiring in a smoke detector). There are also the author's ticklish ways with the jargon of three generations, throwaway lines ("A writer is Like his pencil. He must be worn down to be kept sharp"), and a dandy piece of burlesque when Peachum tries to undress Officer d'Amboise in her patrol car ("Deploying my right hand slowly...
...embarrassments? The plot is meager, the characters wear thin too quickly, the gags are often laid out as if for a garage sale. Consenting Adults does not have the emotional depth or the satiric edge of the author's seriocomedies, The Blood of the Lamb and Reuben, Reuben. In Decency, Conn., a favorite De Vries setting, the commuters and their wives clown around on the wall-to-wall carpeting but hear the steady drumming of eternity on the roof. In Pocock pipes of Pan playing tunes of innocence drown out the ravings of a street-corner Jeremiah. With...
...quite a play, since its structure is that of a labyrinthine interior monologue. This will captivate some playgoers and alienate others. Since about 70% of the material in Virginia comes from the letters and diaries of Woolf, Edna O'Brien is at least as much editor as author of the drama. However, she has a deep affinity for her subject and never violates Woolfs tone of voice. In the title role, Maggie Smith is bold, lustrous and moving; it is as if she had stored up every acting skill she had ever acquired and lavished it on this...
...businesses, but dismayed by a decision that perpetuated a white-dominated electoral system in Mobile, Ala. Free-speech champions got more than they had hoped for in a ruling guaranteeing open criminal trials, but were stunned earlier by the court's support for sanctions against CIA Agent Turned Author Frank Snepp...