Good old-fashioned snickering sexism generally hides behind closed doors these days, so it's with a sense of growing wonder that one slogs one's way through the veteran Denker's Dial-A-Diatribe, starring Judge Harry Spencer, Great Brontosaurus of the Federal bench. "Young woman, this Court takes judicial notice that all women have breasts. Even female attorneys. There is no need to flaunt them in my courtroom. So this Court can concentrate on your argument, you go home and put on a bra. With my limited experience in these matters, I would say a thirty-six C cup should do nicely." That's our hero, Federal District Court Judge Spencer, a cranky, cantankerous, gruff, but fair-minded—such is the author's painful misapprehension—old jurist who has just admonished a woman lawyer he believes is dressed for a "TV jiggle show" (a word to the wise in chambers is not Harry's style). The Women's Bar Association (naturally led by "an Amazon of a spinster in her mid-forties, tall, robust, attired in a quite masculine grey flannel suit") wants him to apologize, but there stands Spencer like a stone wall, so his old enemy, Chief Justice August Cartwright, takes advantage of the ensuing brouhaha to try to force him into retirement. Unabashed, Harry goes on about the business of trying Stockwell v. The State, a class-action suit claiming wage discrimination against female employees. Spencer finds the doctrine of Comparable Worth absurd and threatening (and Denker's stacked-deck version of it certainly is), so he writes a sarcastic opinion, and yet finds for the plaintiff, feeling certain higher courts will overrule him. But those crazed libbers at NOW (represented by actress/feminist/ exercise tycoon "Joan Esty") are too dumb to understand his deceptive plans, and Spencer coyly doesn't enlighten them when he flies out to L.A. to receive their Man of the Year Award. In fact, the gals find him such a charming old coot that they inundate August Cartwright and his buddies with letters, and Harry's job is saved. Back in the office, in an expansive mood, Harry reminisces with his secretary: "God, Betsy, remember this case? Esther Freihofer v. Acme Tool and Die. Clear case of reverse discrimination. Claimed she was held up to ridicule because she was the only girl in the office her boss never made a pass at." Shallow and tendentious. Strictly for cracker-barrel cacklers.
Pub Date: April 1, 1986
ISBN: 0688063861
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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