Word: victorianism
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Chasing the ineffable can make gymnastic philosophy and entertaining drama, but Hildesheimer's pursuit is a didactic lust for lifelessness. Having cleansed Mozart of the cliches of romanticism and Victorian propriety, he spills the cliches of existentialism and psychoanalysis. There are speculations on the speculative and a dozen ways to say perhaps. In one breath the man and his art are separated; in another, "we always experience Mozart's music ... as the catharsis resulting from one man's sublimation of his personal crisis." Mozart is certainly elusive, as Hildesheimer claims, but here he is hidden twice: once...
...round out the hour on PBS after episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs. Yet with the passion of theater people for unearthing every oddment of stage history, an off-Broadway team has assembled Charlotte Sweet, an ingratiating pastiche that re-creates typical music hall turns and simultaneously concocts a conventional Victorian melodrama among the members of a particularly nutty touring troupe...
...readers. A devoted child of the audiovisual age, the millionaire author still likes to get up in the morning and switch on rock 'n' roll. King, his wife Tabitha and their three children alternate between an airy modern house in a Maine village and a 23-room Victorian extravaganza in Bangor. Wherever he happens to be, King compulsively churns out 1,500 words a day, just as he has done since the late 1960s, when he was an English major at the University of Maine. "I'll always write because that's what I do best...
...manual for etiquette, the book suffers most from prolixity. Miss Manners loves to see Miss Manners in print. If fact, one wonders if Martin leads a schizophrenic existence, writing herself letters and answering herself with advice. Her antiquated style, which conjures up visions of a Victorian spinster sitting in the drawing room banging away at a manual typewriter, is enjoyable, but less than perfect for getting quick information...
...stroller through Chautauqua heads toward the lakefront. He wanders among white Victorian frame houses, all cooled by one or several levels of spacious front porches. Spaciousness was an easeful 19th century preoccupation, at least among the prosperous middle-class citizens who could afford to come here (by lake steamer in those days) and enjoy the broad verandas and 20-ft. ceilings of the Hotel Athenaeum, a splendid old yellow-and-green ark that did and still does offer two desserts with each meal. And it was a spaciousness of mind that made a summer of music, lectures and dramatic readings...