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...town newspaper than the inside of a classy $10 hard-back. Always the reporter, he is long on detail and short on interpretation. An endless stream of names, places, death tolls and other gruesome details flashes past, making the book itself a hurricane of facts that often leaves the reader bewildered. There is no real weight, no meaning attached to the cyclone of detail--and when Allen attempts an occasional bit of philosophy, the effort just seems awkward and out of place...
...extensive autobiographic works and correspondence, without disrupting the flow of his own prose. Although the most memorable phrases in the book are Sand's, Barry too is highly readable. He deals with the potentially trite, unhappy childhood syndrome with just a dash of sentimental emotionalism, making the reader aware of the conflicts and complexes which shaped Sand without turning her life into a soapy saga...
Unfortunately both Sand's radicalism and her later conservatism are lost in Barry's lengthy and confusing historical accounts, boring for a reader familiar with the history and unenlightening for the uninformed. The political accounts lack coherence and rely too heavily on loosely connected fragments from Sand's journals. Unlike the vivid portrayals of the literary figures, Sand's political associates are names without personalities...
Thus the book is marred--but far from ruined. Ideology exists without a proper context, Barry's conceptions of feminism, sexual roles and "androgynous minds" may occasionally rankle a feminist reader. His effort to prove his sympathy for feminist causes sometimes backfires, making him sound overbearing instead. But these moments are rare. For the most part, Infamous Woman is both a scholarly and an enjoyable book. Barry admirably portrays the complex woman who wrote shortly before her death, "I am still a troubadour) who believes in love, in art, in the ideal, and sings his song while the world jeers...
Great stories never die. They get reborn on stage. Part of Shakespeare's genius, as any good reader of the "Sources" section of Signet editions knows, was to find the dramatic in someone else's plot. An academician will tell you there is universal meaning and appeal in great works of art. As if to test that definition, playwrights have frequently adapted recongnized greats to new settings and genres. This spring Harvard dramatics offers all kinds of adaptations: Antigone is transported to a troubled Latin American nation and "Wherefore art thou" is put to music. Adaptations are a recognized...