Word: protagonists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...been a major beneficiary. Yale-educated Michael Thomas, who at 46 has had successful careers in both milieus (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Brothers), has distilled from the darker lunacies of these worlds a novel of crackling humor and mordant observation. Its bigger-than-Barron 's protagonist is Oilman Buford ("Bubber") Gudge IV, who has been content to nurse his multibillion-dollar fortune in the Texas Panhandle until lust and vengeance propel him forth like a plague of pissants...
Blume explores both the spirit and the senses. In Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, the twelve-year-old protagonist must choose her religion. Margaret's father is Jewish, her mother Episcopalian. The girl also fears that she will be the last of her clique to menstruate. Prays Margaret: "I'm going to be the only one who doesn't get it. I know it, God. Just like I'm the only one without a religion. Please. . . let me be like everyone else...
When his attention wavers from the buck, ape-neck Stavros is racked by culture shock. Women provide most of the tremors. He half-believes with his sister Fofo that "most American women were, or had recently been, prostitutes." Almost in wonder at his own creation, Kazan watches his protagonist devote "hours to a consideration of the nature of sexual relations in Western society," then come "to the conclusion he'd started with, that the only way to keep a woman in line was to do what the Anatolians do: run off a string of pregnancies, then dress the woman...
...Roberta--the social pariah--who is the most consistent source of spirit when danger arises. Roberta also plays "Sir Scum"; she hurdles shrubbery with Garp in a comic pursuit of reckless drivers, outpacing and protecting her friend. In the eerie feminist funeral for Garp's slain mother, where the protagonist must attend in drag, Roberta runs interference for Garp when he is unmasked. Roberta's is the first shoulder upon which everyone cries...
...fantasy movies? Is texture overwhelming the text? On the evidence of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner-and his previous thriller, the 1979 Alien-it would seem so. Says David Dryer, who helped supervise the special photographic effects of Blade Runner: "The environment in the film is almost a protagonist." He and other talented craftsmen are lavishing their imaginations on graphic design-on high-tech spaceships and déja vu futurism-and allowing the characters to wander through a labyrinthine narrative like lost dwarfs. Moviegoers seeking the smooth propulsion of story line look at these films and ask, "What...