Shangri-La (1946 song) Shangri-La (1946 song) "Shangri-La" is a popular song written by bandleader Matty Malneck and Robert Maxwell in 1946 with lyrics by Carl Sigman. The term comes from "Shangri-La" as the hidden valley of delight in James Hilton's 1933 novel "Lost Horizon". The term "Shangri-La," especially in the 1930s and 1940s, was slang for heaven or paradise, and the song is about the joy of being in love. Composer Maxwell's instrumental version (saxophone/organ lead with brass and rhythm), which featured his harp solo, which is heard in the introduction as well as in the coda section of the song, charted in
Oh What a Paradise It Seems themes, including love, lust, life in suburbia, and a sense of displacement. Writing in the "New York Times", John Leonard called the novella "perfect Cheever; it is perfect, period." John Updike, a friend of Cheever, preferred it to Cheever's novel "Falconer", and remarked on the theme of ice skating, which he called his "Wordsworthian hike" and his "connection with elemental purity and the awesome depths above and below". Oh What a Paradise It Seems Oh What a Paradise It Seems is a 1982 novella by John Cheever. It is Cheever's last work of fiction, published shortly before his death from