PAPA GORSKI

by Catherine B. & Margaret Waterman Osborn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 29, 1968

An unwieldy and unlikely tale, the curious result of an uncritical and inappropriate transposition of Balzac's Pere Goriot to Chicago--of all places--in the 1960's. Balzac's gossipy and wicked urbanites are reproduced as archaic chunks of nineteenth-century commentary from the days when the Gilded Life was the Primrose Porte-cochere beckoning to wayward American boys. The exuberant Balzacian morality characters, undigested, also suffer a sea change into overblown grotesques, declaiming in billboard dialogue. Papa Gorski, the mysterious boarder Mrs. Velotta's boarding house, is the poor bedeviled old father who loves his two awful daughters, Dolly and Toni, not wisely but to excess. Gene Robertson is Chicago's Rastignac, young social climber with one pinky in the caviar. Though fighting Conformity, repelled by the Revolt represented by a black Mack the Knife, Gene, at Papa Gorski's grave (Dolly and Toni were too busy to hark to his dying saws) opts for the Strife of Society in spite of its wickedness. He trots off with Dolly knowing the worst. Poor Gorski couldn't spin in his grave any faster than his creator.

Pub Date: Jan. 29, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION