Word: bluebeard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...BLUEBEARD...
...Piano and half a dozen other books says "Goodbye, better luck next time" to human society in the late 20th century. That said, however, an admirer must admit that Vonnegut's novelizing occasionally ticks on reflexively when there seems to be nothing in particular on his mind. So with Bluebeard, whose hero is a wealthy, one-eyed old man named Rabo Karabekian, a magazine illustrator in his youth, then a soldier during World War II, then, briefly, an acclaimed abstract expressionist painter. There is a random quality to this history: Why one- eyed? Why a painter and not a cellist...
...Everett Quinton -- Ludlam's colleague and for years his lover -- walked onstage to a standing ovation. Throughout the evening he had manfully cavorted through such roles as Flosshilde in Der Ring Gott Farblonjet, Alice in Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide and Lamia the Leopard Woman in Bluebeard. He waited for the cheers to subside and said, "I never felt so alone in my life...
...story like "The Sunrise" typifies the problem with all the stories in Bluebeard's Egg. The women all, somehow, behave with condescension. The men all, somehow, are satisfied with these truncated relationships. After a while the women meld together into one composite character; you forget all her temporary names as soon as you've finished the last story. She is simply the Atwood bitch...
Carter loves to recreate old stories. That is her hallmark, despite the fact that she is often marketed as a feminist. A previous collection of her short stories, The Bloody Chamber, includes Carter's elaborate versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, and Puss in Boots...