Volume 23, Number 18 · November 11, 1976
Endangered Species
By Michael Wood
The Takeover
by Muriel Spark
Viking, 266 pp., $8.95
Sleep It Off, Lady
by Jean Rhys
Harper & Row, 176 pp., $7.95
Lovers and Tyrants
by Francine du Plessix Gray
Simon and Schuster, 316 pp., $8.95
'I knew,' the narrator of Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon says, 'that since 1933 the rich could only be happy alone together.' Muriel Spark, in The Takeover, suggests that since 1973, with the oil crisis and the onset of the new Dark Ages, the rich have lost even that insulated happiness. Sponged on, held up, ripped off, blackmailed, kidnapped, they have become an endangered species, their paintings, antiques, cash, and multiple international holdings mere invitations to swindle and looting; all their assets transfigured into liabilities. There has been 'a change in the meaning of property and money,' we are told:
Review, 3548 words
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