Word: maudlin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only March, but already there is a leading candidate for 1983's Six Weeks award: a brass teardrop given to the most maudlin picture of the year. But then, Table for Five perhaps has an unfair advantage. It was written by David Seltzer, who did the script for Six Weeks, and it stars Jon Voight, who loves to cry and apparently wants everyone else to join him in a grand boohoo. He plays a divorced father who takes his three children, after years of neglecting them, on a Mediterranean cruise and, en route, learns that his ex-wife...
...ability to evoke reality in all of its unpleasant truthfulness falters only when it slips into sentimentality. "Hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place, hands on hips, straight-backed, round-bellied, high-behinded women" have no interest or time to be maudlin. In this first novel, Naylor also demonstrates a rare mastery of the Black idiom and a delicate sense of balance in her usage. Chronology, the anathema of many a more seasoned writer, is the building block of the novel. Flashbacks, recollections and some of the finest dream sequences in contemporary fiction...
...veterans who made their way to the capital last week for the National Salute to Viet Nam Veterans, an event organized by the ex-soldiers for themselves. The gathering sometimes seemed conventional: patriotic eulogies, American Legion caps, martial music and maudlin, affectionate reunions of old platoon chums. But the convocation had an edge, a sense of catharsis, mainly because it was large and public. In the end, with a splendidly ragtag march down Constitution Avenue and the dedication of the Veterans Memorial, the spectacle seemed like the national homecoming the country had never offered...
...building remain steeped in the magazine's lore. Behind the red door of 21 South Street lie walls of framed memorabilia--special issue covers, photographs, announcements of a poetry reading by John Ashbery, a yellowing newspaper article about five editors forced to resign in 1937 after publishing two "crudely maudlin" articles. ("It is about time that college authorities maintained rigid supervision over the childish literary efforts of these embryonic authors who seem to think it a mark of distinction to dish up dirt for the edification of other immature minds," sputtered the prosecuting lawyer). In a place of honor near...
...weather prediction proves accurate, and on Christmas Day he writes: "[Clifton] has devoted a lot of time to weeping and telling very, very long stories about the various deaths of his various beloved friends. He retails these gruesome memories with a wealth of maudlin detail. How he first heard the dreadful news of their demises, how he reacted, how they were laid out, how the memorial services were conducted, etc. These slow, slow ramblings inevitably end up with Maybelle . .. and then he breaks down and sobs and we all gaze at each other in wild surmise. He admitted...