October 2016
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A textbook example of the unthinkable actually happening: "It's good to be the king," says Mel Brooks (as Louis XVI) in The History of the World, Part I, lifting the skirt of one of his lovely courtieresses in order to dry-hump her. It's make-believe Hollywood pseudo-licentiousness. It's outrageous, beyond the pale, and hilarious as long…
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Elsa Morante, the distinguished Italian novelist, spent the war years in what might be called internal exile, holed up, hungry, with her friend and later husband Alberto Moravia in a one-room hut in Sant'Agata (both Morante and Moravia were half Jewish). After Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were arrested and shot, hung upside down…