Tag Archives: John Steinbeck

cosmetic nouns: baked in the cake

Where economic misfortune is concerned, a word on nomenclature is necessary… In the course of his disastrous odyssey, Pal Joey, the most inspired of John O’Hara’s creations, finds himself singing in a cheap nightclub strictly for cakes and coffee. He … Continue reading

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1939: the two americas

…The social and political attitudes that had arisen out of the depression were stil firmly in control of the national mind. There were, as John Dos Passos had written, two Americas: the capitalistic one that saw the solution to its … Continue reading

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1939: plus ca change…

.In the United States of 1939 a good many conditions prevailed that seem rather odd today. But some unseen hand, invisible spirit, has always been at the heart of the American experience… ..And change of all sorts is the heart … Continue reading

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1939: rays and wrath

What was America really like in 1939? Well the experts behind the New York World’s Fair of 1939 with its theme of “the world of tomorrow” thought they knew, and could also predict the future. America was on the threshold … Continue reading

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1939: better Ma Perkins

In 1939 the United States was on the threshold of a new era, but all the experts were prisoners to the Great Depression just behind and blind to the coming implications of World War II… Among books the great political … Continue reading

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1939: ole times sake

America in 1939, stuck between the rear-view mirror of the Great Depression and the impending war. Idyllic times? The good ole’ days? The New York World’s Fair of 1939 had as its theme “the world of tomorrow,” one based on … Continue reading

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the 1950’s : early stirrings of disaffection

…and a list of some of the leading Hollywood movie stars of the fifties is enough to strike a chill into the heart of cineastes everywhere-Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Rory Calhoun, Rock Hudson, Debra Paget, Robert … Continue reading

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sky high

The tall boy. Robert Wadlow didn’t mind the jokes about the weather up there, but there were worse drawbacks to being the tallest man in the United States… Alton, Illinois, a small manufacturing city on the Mississippi River twenty miles … Continue reading

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Islands in the dream

Ernest Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Scolds. Two men. Two souls; the image and the shadow circling each other. He mostly lived up to that dazzling public persona he constructed for himself, but what deeper forces, psychic jackals, stalked his … Continue reading

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the shadow side of the page

Hemingway: the image and the shadow. What lay behind the dazzling public persona he created for himself? … It must be remembered that the image is an essential part of the truth about Hemingway. Not only did he project an … Continue reading

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