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unearths some literary gems.
From Sights and Spectacles, by Mary McCarthy:
***Odets and Steinbeck[s’] . . . frequent ascents into “fine writing” are punctuated with pauses for applause that are nearly audible.***Mr. Maxwell Anderson, having already taken his title from Keats, presented one of his characters with the whole of Eliot’s Sweeney Among the Nightingales, which was recited twice and served once to bring down a curtain which might otherwise have stayed up forever.***Harvey, with its rabbit six feet tall, is the talk of the country, but this will not insure the next producer against the failure of a play about a short giraffe.***Though [the plays of George Kelly] are performed by actors, their complete cast of characters is not listed on the program, their real heroes being glasses of water, pocketbooks, telephones, and after-dinner coffee cups.***The Hamlet echo is part of the joke, like a Mona Lisa on a moustache.***[In Congreve], physical existence itself is the jest.***These plays are not contemptible . . . . But the heavy workmanship of these structures is out of all proportion to their function; it is as though one were to make an umbrella out of solid marble.***
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