Word: coughlin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weaknesses are most evident when it turns half-heartedly to criticism and attempted explications of his novels as it does with A Fable in the last chapter. Here, after outlining the complex plot of the book and commenting on its obvious aspects, Coughlin rather despairingly admits his incapacity to treat it fully or even profitably. "The heavy burden of symbolism of A Fable doubtless will keep Faulkner scholars busy for many years to come. . . The book, on the whole, seems demented...
...Coughlin shows us the young author as the townspeople of Oxford, Mississippi saw him in the years following the first world war. Not much of a success at anything, borrowing money from his friends and doing odd jobs of carpentry to live, he wandered through the streets silently, sometimes barefootel, and stood musing for hours in front of the old curthouse, a proud, shabby questionmark...
Returning to the present and to Faculkner's adventures in Hollywood, however, Coughlin weakens the book with an overdose of anecdotes. He seems to become so involved with the writer's eccentricities that, instead of trying to explain them or put them in proper perspective, he piles amusing incidents on the reader so heavily that the chapter largely destroys the clear outline of Faulkner the man that he has sketched in the earlied part of the book...
...world which Coughlin reveals in his book, moreover, is not really Faulkner's private world. There is a distinct feeling that he is looking in, that he has failed to get beneath the surface or Faulkner's life and is only recording, as fully and as competently as possible, the externals of this world...
...Coughlin attended Roxbury Latin and did not learn to row until his freshman year at college. He made the Yardling lightweight eight that year and has rowed with the varsity ever since. He rowed at both two and four this year...