MovieChat Forums > Topaz (1969) Discussion > NYT Book Review of 'Topaz'---

NYT Book Review of 'Topaz'---

posted 13 years ago by hisgrandmogulhighness
3 replies | jump to latest

New York Times, Sunday, October 15, 1967, Book Review Section, p. 57, c. 1:

Criminals At Large

by Anthony Boucher

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But if you want reassurance as to the professional skill and art of suspense writers, even on off days, you have only to regard (I would not say "read") the work of mass-market, best-selling authors who try to compete. The latest is Leon Uris, whose tale of espionage, TOPAZ (McGraw-Hill, $5.95), may rank with the ventures in suspense by Pearl Buck, Taylor Caldwell and Frances Parkinson Keyes. Mr. Uris is flagrantly unable to construct a plot, a character, a novel, or a sentence in the English language--and he takes 130,000 words to display his incompetence. The editor has not bothered even to check the time of the action (the Cuban missle crisis in October, 1962), which keeps shifting between autumn and spring, and 1962 and 1963.

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[–] ecarle 12 years ago

Fascinating.

Becaaaaause...(as Hitchcock might stretch the intro):

A similarly short-paragraph New York Times Anthony Boucher review of Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho" in 1959 (and Boucher LIKED that one a fair lot) helped get Hitchcock looking for the "Psycho" book, reading it and making a movie of it.

You'd think Hitchocck...evidently a regular reader of the Boucher NYT column...would have read this "Topaz" pan. Probably did, took on the book(owned by Universal already) in hopes of making it better. After all, it was set in France(The Country That Loved Hitchcock), was about spies in love and sacrifice, etc.

I also love Boucher's satiric reference to the thrillers by "Pearl Buck, Taylor Caldwell, and Frances Parkinson Keyes." Boucher's "beat" was mysteries and thrillers; sounds like he had the proper respect for the TRUE writers in that trade.

Thanks for the clip!

[–] movieghoul 12 years ago

I also love Boucher's satiric reference to the thrillers by "Pearl Buck, Taylor Caldwell, and Frances Parkinson Keyes."

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Well, I consider Pearl Buck's short story Ransom a classic, and it was anthologized as one of the 100 best stories of the century.

[–] hisgrandmogulhighness 12 years ago

New York Times can be nasty when they want to be . . . it's what Hitchcock filmed, and how different that is from the novel, that is important . . . another thing I picked up when doing research was that Uris' wife committed suicide soon after their marriage, I believe it was in 1969 . . . something strange with the novel and the film!