Word: franz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rome Reporters Walter Galling and Leonora Dodsworth find that the strong dollar hasn't changed their lives. Says Galling: "There's a little thing here called inflation." Munich Reporter Franz Spelman recalls the sad days of the wilting dollar. "Just eight years ago," he says, "some Germans, remembering the CARE packages that Americans sent after World War II, began giving the families of needy U.S. servicemen toys, clothing and furniture...
...performers dig beneath this mannerism to suggest years of buried sorrow. Nancy Marchand, as the family's self-described cutup, has the gift of making banal observations sound witty. Anne Pitoniak, as the eldest and prissiest, combines dictatorial will with genuine dignity. Peggy Cass is the family entertainer, Elizabeth Franz its happiest housewife and Gisela Caldwell its edgy protofeminist, whose eventual crack-up seems to result from her discontent with women's lot. The most affecting performance comes from Bette Henritze, as a stroke victim whose singsong speech does not obscure a larger tragedy. When she admits...
...Sarajevo, the problem, of course, was not that it was unknown, but the nature of its fame. Has a history test ever been drawn up anywhere in the world that did not require the answer: "The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo"? The people of Sarajevo have nonetheless stoically retained their fierce pride in a history rich--that is to say complicated--enough to explain even Princip. It is good, however, to have newer memories, though even recollections of the 1984 Winter Olympics touch on the subject of Princip...
Geneva lost its independence to the French Revolution. France, which almost completely surrounds the city, annexed it in 1798, but after the fall of Napoleon it finally became the 22nd canton of Switzerland. By then it was just a peaceful backwater. Franz Liszt came here after eloping with the Countess d'Agoult, and he composed a piano piece inspired by the city's church bells. "Happy is he who can stay long by these shores," wrote another aristocratic visitor, Lord Byron...
Many great writers have been obliged to moonlight, some at seemingly incongruous occupations. Christopher Marlowe was a government spy, Henry Fielding a criminal-court justice, Franz Kafka an insurance-company clerk and Herman Melville a customs inspector. Among living writers, Primo Levi has held perhaps the most improbable job. For two decades the Italian author worked as a commercial chemist, analyzing resins and rock samples for makers of varnish and other products. Can literature spring from such mundane matter? Chemistry would seem as impenetrable to the literary imagination as lead...