VINCENT CANBY held the unique distinction of having served as both film critic and theatre critic for The New York Times. He was also, in a profession where it is hard not to make enemies or invoke jealousy, held in affection, as well as...

VINCENT CANBY As a memorial tribute to Vincent Canby, the "Arts & Leisure" section of the New York Times recently published half a page of excerpts of his prose, as selected by The Editors. Implacable beings of ominous name! With grim rectitude,...

The new Broadway musical Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Greif, is a tale of two acts. After last season’s successful run at Playwrights Horizons, the show’s creators tried to solve the problem of the expository first act, but what they might have done is drop...

The new Broadway musical Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Greif, is a tale of two acts. After last season’s successful run at Playwrights Horizons, the show’s creators tried to solve the problem of the expository first act, but what they might have done is drop...

Can a chilly, misanthropic, half-crippled, middle-aged, twice-divorced, multimillionaire WASP whose hobby is researching the Albigensian heresies find happiness with a radical Jewish journalist who's 20 years younger than he, depressed by his money and resolved "never, never [to] marry a goy?" Yes and no is the answer delivered in ["Unnatural Scenery"]…. Marshall Lewis Henderson, the WASP multimillionaire, and Jackie Gold, the Jewish journalist, commence living toge...

"Living Quarters" is the story of a charmingly psychotic woman in the deranged late 20th century. It's told in language that shimmers. It's a story that emerges from plots that explore human longing, suffering and pleasure among the civilized on three continents as though seeking a statement about a condition beyond articulation…. If I understand "Living Quarters" correctly, it suggests, while offering champagne-and-acid entertainment, that the present enviro...

Film critics who write novels are often suspected of trying to enter the world of filmmaking through the back door. In Vincent Canby's case, let us dispose of the suspicion. His first novel, [Living Quarters,] although it begins with an act of violence, soon turns into a recounting of the life, loves, and schizophrenia of a madcap heiress from the Midwest. (p. 26) Mr. Canby's prose is flat and dry, glinting now and then with satiric, disenchanted humor. The book's method is that of reme...