6 results for "Romance"

Reading lyrics

Gottlieb, Robert
A comprehensive anthology bringing together more than one thousand of the best American and English song lyrics of the twentieth century; an extraordinary celebration of a unique art form and an indispensable reference work and history that celebrates one of the twentieth century’s most enduring and cherished legacies. Reading Lyrics begins with the first masters of the colloquial phrase, including George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”), P. G. Wodehouse (“Till the Clouds Roll By”), and Irving Berlin, whose versatility and career span the period from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to “Annie Get Your Gun” and beyond. The Broadway musical emerges as a distinct dramatic form in the 1920s and 1930s, its evolution propelled by a trio of lyricists—Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart—whose explorations of the psychological and emotional nuances of falling in and out of love have lost none of their wit and sophistication. Their songs, including “Night and Day,” “The Man I Love,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” have become standards performed and recorded by generation after generation of singers. The lure of Broadway and Hollywood and the performing genius of such artists as Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ethel Merman inspired a remarkable array of talented writers, including Dorothy Fields (“A Fine Romance,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”), Frank Loesser (“Guys and Dolls”), Oscar Hammerstein II (from the groundbreaking “Show Boat” of 1927 through his extraordinary collaboration with Richard Rodgers), Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Andy Razaf, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim. Reading Lyrics also celebrates the work of dozens of superb craftsmen whose songs remain known, but who today are themselves less known—writers like Haven Gillespie (whose “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” may be the most widely recorded song of its era); Herman Hupfeld (not only the composer/lyricist of “As Time Goes By” but also of “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” and “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba”); the great light versifier Ogden Nash (“Speak Low,” “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and, yes, “The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull”); Don Raye (“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mister Five by Five,” and, of course, “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”); Bobby Troup (“Route 66”); Billy Strayhorn (not only for the omnipresent “Lush Life” but for “Something to Live For” and “A Lonely Coed”); Peggy Lee (not only a superb singer but also an original and appealing lyricist); and the unique Dave Frishberg (“I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Van Lingo Mungo”). The lyricists are presented chronologically, each introduced by a succinct biography and the incisive commentary of Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball.
Random House 2000-11-21 706 pages

Crossing delancey: a romantic comedy

Sandler, Susan
Comedy Characters: 2 male 3 female Combination interior exterior set Isabel is a modern young woman who lives alone and works in a book shop. When she is not pining after a handsome author she is visiting her grandmother (Bubbe) in Manhattan's Lower East Side. This irascible granny and her friend the matchmaker have found a "good catch" for Isabel whose initial reluctance gives way to a blossoming romance when she finally meets Sam the pickle vendor as the end of the
French 1987 86 pages

A clown in the moonlight

Kunstler, James Howard
This comic romance is set at a small bohemian liberal arts college in Vermont. Embarking on his first teaching job in a longed-for idyllic New England country setting, Richie Schuster’s marriage to snarky and glamorous wife, Sally, soon goes up in flames, along with his academic career as he declares war on his fellow faculty members. Contains many excellent farcial blackouts and sharp, Pinter-like dialogue.This was James Howard Kunstler’s second novel, published in 1981, some time before he became better known as a social critic and author of the acclaimed non-fiction books The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic. Reviewers pilloried Kunstler as “just another unhappy divorced college professor writing about his sorry life,” but Kunstler had never taught school at any level and had never been married when he wrote the book.
Sphere 1982 218 pages

Titch: a novel

Bermant, Chaim
From Publishers Weekly With this first installment in a projected trilogy, the prolific author (The Patriarch) once again depicts immigrant Jews assimilating in Great Britain. A rabbi's son and former yeshiva student who himself emigrated some years ago from Russia to the United Kingdom, Bermant is a shrewd but loving storyteller, and he limns WW II Britain and the Jewish milieu with acuity, buoying a familiar coming-of-age plot with wry humor and deft characterization. Foremost among the engaging, authentic characters is his protagonist Sammy Hoch, or Titch, whose Yiddish-speaking parents, "making desperate efforts to turn native," address him only in English, "with the result that until I was about six we were virtually incommunicado." Short and bookish, and afflicted with the double burden of being Jewish and Polish by birth, Titch enlists in the British army but ends up, alas, in a Polish army regiment stationed in Britain. There he is made acolyte to an apostate rabbi, an immigrant who assumed an ecclesiastic role as a ticket to England (if his sponsors "had asked me to become a juggler, I would have become a juggler, and I would probably have enjoyed it more"). Bermant followers won't be surprised that Titch's "most important experience of the war" is an encounter with a married woman. Readers will be eager to pursue Titch and his adventures in the forthcoming sequels. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This is the first installment of a trilogy by the author of The Patriarch and other novels of Jewish life in Great Britain. In 1925, young Sammy Hoch travels with his parents and sister Sosh from Poland to Manchester, England. Sammyor "Titch," as his sister Sosh lovingly calls himsees himself as too short, too bookish, too Jewish, too foreign. His parents are repressive, his sister Sosh shrewish. After a shining academic career, Titch looks forward to escaping his past with a military career in World War II. Unfortunately, after a stint in the British army, Titch gets called up by the Polish armyand confusion and hilarity result. Titch's attempts at romance are amusing, colorful, and droll, his descriptions of wartime Britain revealing. Bermant does portray Jewish values as burdensome, but then this is only the first of the trilogy. Recommended. Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1987 191 pages