MR

I ordered it and I found it is just the playbill, which I've already got one as I entered the theature in New York City. In case the real playwrite it out, somebody please kindly tell me where to find it. :)

There is plenty to like about this play by Jeff Baron, who has written more for television and film. The premise, in which a young corporate man is compelled by a judge to make regular visits to an elderly Jewish man he struck with his car, is loaded with opportunities for character conflict and humor. Initially the men, who are of different generations and different attitudes about their "Jewishness," are so badly matched the playwright has to cash in some disbelief credit to keep the arrangement going. The terms of their friendship tug at the heartstrings with the neatness and economy of a television 'dramedy.'

If you ask more than this of an evening of theatre, for perhaps a deeper and more surprising exploration of a dramatic theme, you will find the water shallow here. Moreover, the playwright's orientation toward film and video shows via some unwieldy scene changes. At one point, the playwright orders the hopelessly cluttered apartment to be spic and span after a blackout between scenes - not after an act break, which would be more practical. The camera can do that; in theatre, we have to move things around in real time.

The dialogue is quick, lean, and pretty funny. It might be a wonderful television special, and is much closer to a teleplay than dramatic literature.

A nice book that tries to take a snapshot of an historical period. The idea is somewhat good but, unfortunately, the book has no head and no tail. Moreover, there is too much sex, even for an Italian reader.

Studies of cultural conflict between native americans and white europeans always create a sense of tension among white historians. Such is the case with Peter Murray's work on Anglican missionary William Duncan. Given that the study of Duncan has gone through various metamorpheses, from early hagiographies by authors such as Arctander and others,to William Gilbert Beattie's trashing of him in his biogrphy of Tsimshian missionary Edward Marsden; Murray may see himself as a revisionist who is correcting Beattie's errors. Unfortunately, Murray does not do much better than the early hagiographies in the sense of objectivity. When one examines Duncan's letters, one immediately grasps the conflicts and contradictions in his work. He was one of the earliest missionary pioneers on the northern Pacific Rim, yet he had a problem with power in that he wanted to retain control of his mission, without any interferance from either the Anglican church, with which he eventually broke, or the Tsimshians themselves. He never could grasp the fact that the Tsimshians had grown in his over fifty years of work to the point that they could reasonably control the destiny of their own church. Murray pays no attention to any of these facts, as he seeks to praise Duncan at the expense of Marsden, Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson, and others. He presents much anecdotal evidence, but is always selective in his facts, which may be the greatest historiographical sin.

Even though no one will probably read this, I feel I have to warn Holmes fans if they find this book and want to read it. I'll put it bluntly, it was very boring. I had to force myself to finish it, mostly because it was due back at the library soon. I have no idea what the author was trying to do writing this book, since it obvisously didn't get much attention. The book is not really a biography, he (Holmes) does not start out saying where he was born, in fact he never goes there but sort of skips to his childhood in the middle of the story to explain why he never talked about his childhood with Watson. Which isn't reason enough to read this book. Some things that annoyed me was the fact that the author tells us that "the woman" was actually a famous (or is that infamous?) prostitute; Holmes had never gotten married because the type of women he liked were of "a certain occupation." Holmes? Never! All in all a very bad, boring, and not worthy of Sir Author Conan Doyle.

I collect the old versions of these books, as well as the toys & merchandise that arose from the books. I love reading them and find that they can be helpful in explaining basic feelings and attributes of a person to children. This book, however, does not explain really what "lucky" is throughout the book. I was disappointed, and I hope that the rest of the new series (I'm pretty sure this story wasn't one of the originals from the 1970s) are not written as poorly.

A picaresque, following 'Soapey' Sponge - a sportsman but not quite a gentleman - as he foxhunts and fortune-hunts his way around England. He exploits (as Surtees satirises) the failings of those he encounters - Waffles (spendthrift), Jawleyford (humbug), Puffington (parvenu), Jogglebury (foolish), Scattercash (debauched)... Only coarse Lord Scamperdale consistently detests him. People invite him to stay but struggle to evict him. His selfishness diminishes only on meeting & falling for lovely Lucy Glitters while hunting . Lacks sympathetic characters, silly names and voices abound and overlong given its lightness and looseness. Terrific foxhunting detail & a delightlful, surprising ending.

Rating : 54.6% Moments of Beauty (5) Characterisation (6) Sincerity (6) Humour (6) Adhesiveness (5) Profundity - Social (6) Profundity - Maetaphysical (2) Sense of Place (8) Significance (5) Structure & Plotting (6) Style - Readability (7) Style - Virtuosity & Uniqueness (5) Theme - Strength & Unity (4)

I respect that this is a fairly old children's book - but it ultimately offers very little - both in the way of story and illustrations. Pass it by.

Garson Kanin was terrified of Willie Maugham. Perhaps that is how he remained in a limbo state of good grace when so many others did not. But we are told that Maugham actually preferred Ruth Gordon, Kanin's wife. The problem with this book is that it's almost painful to read due to Kanin's fear of offending the indisputable master who, truth be told, was an intolerant despot.
The result is a book that provides less insight into Maugham than it does into Kanin. The resulting anxiety dominates and obscures the promise of an intimate picture of this contentious, genius and diletante. Kanin describes sending back a bottle of wine with the disclosure that he would never have done that alone. (Actually, Maugham did it anyway.) Following an offensive remark about Italians, Kanin musters up the courage to say that it was a gross generalization. To that Maugham replied, that without generalizations there would be no conversation. Not once are we apprised of a 'score' on Kanin's part. The hagiography may be warrented, in fact I think it is, but why put yourself through these anguished recapitulations that were often masochistic. Furthermore, why put it in print?
I love Maugham, and I wanted an insider's view but frankly, one gets more substance from the less personalized accounts. He is a worthy writer, a sharp disector (he was a physician, afterall) of the ignoble colonial practices that were practically a religion of British imperialism. Kanin missed so many opportunities -as a result of his timid obsession- to genuinely study the multi-faceted gentleman. I would love to know for instance, how Maugham really felt about the indigenous people and self- determination. I'd also like very much to hear his politically incorrect 'generalizations.' We do get a lot of Maugham pontificating about writing.
Kanin's book is a disappointment. I cannot recommend it for my fellow Maugham lovers- I'm sorry to say.

T.F. Powys: A Modern Allegorist is a study of an unusual kind. It has a double focus: on the one hand it is an examination of changing attitudes towards allegory, from the early nineteenth century until the present day; on the other, it is a study of the Dorset novelist, fabulist, and short story writer Theodore Francis Powys, an early twentieth century writer of allegorical fiction. The link between these two subjects is the theory of allegory propounded by Angus Fletcher, which the present study takes to be the most helpful and appropriate methodology for examining Powys's achievement. The high reputation that Powys enjoys has hitherto been attended by critical disagreement as to the exact nature of his use of allegory. Marius Buning contends that in this respect Powys has been misunderstood, largely because of the inadequacy of most contemporary responses to allegory, as the opening chapter makes clear. The two chapters devoted to his most celebrated novels Mr. Weston's Good Wine and Unclay provide invaluable guidelines for future scholars and persuasively vindicate the literary subtlety of Powys's art. Marius Buning's book is a ground-braking experiment in meta-critical thinking and intertextual dialogue, which is both valuable for its own sake and illuminating in its treatment of the many critics whom the author so enthusiastically discusses.

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This story is not an original Enid Blyton. The author is in fact Fiona Cummings who was commissioned to write another series of Noddy Stories under the Enid Blyton trademark. Dame Enid gets full credit on the cover and title page but you have to look on the publisher's details page (ISBN etc) to see that the story is in fact by Fiona Cummings.

The story is written 40 years after the classic 24 title Noddy Series "All Aboard for Toy Land". A good example of the original is "Noddy and Tessie Bear" The fate of the new generation "Mr Plod and the Stolen Bicycle" is very similar to what has happened to Pooh Bear and Tigger in recent years. We have gone from the quaint Edwardian language of the original to the uncomplicated, perhaps, trivialized language of the contemporary versions.

We have lost all of the "Englishness" of the original. Strange vocabulary and sentence structures could be off-putting to children used to a cartoon/comic dominated diet. Old fashioned concepts such as manners, politeness and deference have been expunged.

The illustrations have also been sanitized. Compared to the pictures in the original series they have lost their bright hard edges and have drifted into a more pastelly palette.

Although the original series of Noddy could be heavy going for some of today's young readers, we have seen how JK Rowling has demonstrated that the reading appetites of young readers can include sophisticated content.

Look out for the "Noddy Classic Library" and avoid the "Toy Town Stories", As bedtime stories go, the Classic Noddy will give you a 30-minute passage to dreamland. In contrast the modern versions like "Mr Plod and the Stolen Bicycle" would be lucky to give you 3 minutes of story. What child would be satisfied with that?

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