The Kansas City Times from Kansas City, Missouri • 25

(Ely CTity B-5 Friday May 8 1 987 Writers the critics wrote off Complied by Bill Henderson Even Shakespeare and Tolstoy took their lumps from reviewers and other readers Indeed it seems no writer escapes this world without criticism an assumption that surely is a comfort to writers of this era and a testimony to the divergent opinions of most any literary work Here are a few of the indignities various authors have suffered at the hands of professional reviewers the contemporaries or others Some of these works have been respected by the general public for at least 25 years and some of the works have been esteemed for centuries Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851) a huge dose of hyperbolic slang maudlin sentimentalism and tragic-comic bubble and William Harrison Ainsworth New Monthly Magazine Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1601) is vulgar and barbarous drama which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France or Italy one would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken Voltaire 1768 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) it gasps for want of craft and sensibility The book is an emotional hodgepodge no mood is sustained long enough to register for more than a The New York Times Book Review rumors never die and they fade away the May issue of Celebrity Focus says not while the magazine is still being published anyway The magazine reports that after Farrah Fawcett Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson were spotted huddling at a Beverly Hills bash last summer the eavesdroppers began their work Soon no one in town was shocked to hear pacted a reunion in a TV movie as what? Aaron suggestion that they reappear in the detective duds that brought them their first fame (as met with ladylike no thank Now the gossip network whispers that what they really want to do is remake to Marry a the classic screen comedy of the Farrah as Marilyn Pola Kate as Lauren Schatze and Jackie as Betty Loco and got a sure winner But when do they sign on the dotted today Sing a song of Harry In celebration of Harry birthday anniversary City Theatre will present a musical based on the 33rd life Buck Stops at 8 pm today at the Roger Sermon Community Center Truman and Noland roads Independence The musical traces life from early childhood to his 1 953 exit from the White House Admission is $5 for adults and $250 for senior adults Other activities today: 8 pm Midland Center for the Performing Arts Tickets are $2350 to $2950 Olathe Community Theatre 8 pm 500 Loula St Olathe Admission is $5 for adults and $250 for students and senior adults Royal Northgate Community Theatre 8 pm 2117 NE 48th St Kansas City North Admission is $4 for adults and $2 for children and senior adults Husker Du 8 pm Uptown Theatre Admission is 1 1 plus a service charge Vince Bilardo and Friends Tunes at Noon 1 1:45 am to 1:15 pm level one atrium Crown Center Shops Free the slide presentation 7:30 pm Cave Spring Interpretive Center 8701 Gregory Blvd Admission is 1 Orphans of the and 7:30 pm Martin City Melodrama Vaudeville Co Admission is $8 for adults and $7 for children students and senior adults Ensemble 8 pm Boulevard Theatre Saloon Admission is $8 before 7: 1 5 pm and 10 after 7:15 Lion the Witch and the 10 am and 1 pm Theatre for Young America Admission is $4 the Coterie 10 am Crown Center Shops Admission is $4 Showhouse XVIII 10 am to 8 pm 3361 SW Longview Road Summit Admission is $7 No children under age 8 admitted Compiled by Timothy Curry Norman Mailer talent for his Tale of Two Cities It was a sheer dead pull from start to finish It all seemed so insincere such a transparent make-believe a mere piece of John Burroughs Century Magazine Emily Dickinson eccentric dreamy half-educated recluse in an out-of-the-way New England village or anywhere else cannot with impunity set at defiance the laws of gravitation and grammar Oblivion lingers in the immediate Thomas Bailey Aldrich Atlantic Monthly 1 892) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) Flaubert is not a Le Figaro Ernest Hemingway is of course a commonplace that Hemingway lacks the serene confidence that he is a full-sized Max Eastman The New Republic The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948) he has a taste for transcribing banalities he also has a talent for The New Republic Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (1925) has never been alive cannot very well go on living So this is a book of the season The New York Herald Tribune Henry James an idiot and a Boston idiot to boot than which there is nothing lower in the HL Mencken Ulysses by James Joyce (1922) finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire The book is diffuse It is brackish It is pretentious It is underbred not only in the obvious but in the literary sense A first-rate writer 1 mean respects writing too much to be Virginia Woolf in her diary Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (performed in New York 1949) you were to ask me what is about I would say about as much as I can Robert Garland The New York Journal-American Copyright Pushcart Press Excerpted from Rotten Reviews A Literary Companion edited by Bill Henderson Distributed by Special FeaturesSyndication Sales William Shakespeare Hamlet work of a drunken Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877) rubbish Show me one page that contains an The Odessa Courier The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884) gross trifling with every fine feeling Mr Clemens has no reliable sense of Springfield Republican Honore de Balzac imagination is shown in invention in the creating of character and plot or in the delineation of passion de place in French literature will be neither considerable nor Eugene Poitou Revue des Deux Mondesi 1856) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) fancy that any real child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff overwrought Books A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1853) winter I forced myself through Kansas folklore made by folks studied by scholars example derived from the sex-and-mur-der intrigue involving the former Emporia minister Thomas Bird and his onetime church secretary Lorna Anderson Eldridge Eldridge was convicted of conspiring to kill her former husband Martin Anderson She is now serving a prison term and recently was charged with the 1983 killing of husband Bird was convicted of killing his wife Sandy in 1983 The Tom and Lorna jokes like many others common and act See FOLKLORE B-6 Col 1 sities Hessini stressed that organizers hope to avoid a weekend of all work and no play is a way of getting faculty and artisans together to have not only an academic perspective but to have people who are perpetuating traditions or even creating new Hessini said encourage people who are not academics but who are interested to Kansas has its own distinctive folklore or folklores to be more precise The people of Emporia created a school of and Lorna for mountain people of the Ozarks or the Appalachians but folklore is alive and well on the prairie as well Hessini said Some facets of Kansas folklore will come to the fore when the society holds its annual meeting today and Saturday at Southwestern College The assembly which is open to the public will include academic presentations on topics from the Kansas State Fair to dental humor And there will be a bluegrass jam session a walking tour of Winfield and demonstrations of crafts Although the conference is geared heavily toward faculty from state univer By Karen Uhlenhuth Of the Metropolitan Staff One thing can be said for the Tom and Lorna jokes coming out of Emporia Kan the tooth fairy and a Burden Kan man who handcrafts saddles and cowboy chaps all the stuff of folklore is a series of traditions that link people explained Marguerite Hessini a professor of linguistics and French at Southwestern College in Winfield Kan and president of the Kansas Folklore Society Some associate folklore with the Sale always something new to view CDS Mojri ine Urine at himusik Posihorn Serenade Bohm icnnj Berlin Philharmonic MOZART REQUIEM KV 626 COLIN DAVIS HH SU1PHOM OW 1 1 1 I COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS $1099 mt PHILIPS SltVERUNE STAND BY ME 'liiMiik I mi' ji 4ii I vhiliiiniu KjuIRjnhIm' twnpHili Miahert -him Sum LiuIiiii hii jii I in ngtln All CJ lassies On: Philips Silverline Classics Deutsche Grammophon Galleria London Jubilee ADRM GERSHWIN RHAPSODY IN BLUE AMERICAN IN PARIS HAAS DEWAART SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE 99( RENTALS PHILIPS SILVERLINE CLASSICS LONDON JUBILEE ADRM Hit movies like "Stand By Me" from RCA Columbia Pictures Home Video are available for rental today RCAColumbia Pictures Home Video 1987 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