Word: absurd
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...frame of temperate loveliness. Moreover, the family somehow transcends its tragedy by the very energy and fullness with which the tragedy is lived. The director has a sense of life far larger than the merely tragic. Moreover, he has humor. The picture bubbles over with gentle laughter at the absurd things people do and are, and the set pieces of comedy-a day at school, a band concert, a visit to the village theater-are just about as funny as organized humor...
...Gaulle outlined, too, an ambitious five-year plan to raise Algeria's Moslems to something like economic equality with Frenchmen. But this would require peace. "Therefore, turning to those who are prolonging a fratricidal conflict, I say: Stop this absurd fighting, and you will see at once a new blossoming of hope all over the land of Algeria. You will see the prisons emptying; you will see the opening up of a future great enough to embrace everybody...
...hope of peace, amidst so much hatred and recrimination, relies on whether both sides at this crucial moment are capable of trust, magnanimity and wisdom. "Stop this absurd fighting," pleaded De Gaulle last week. Answered Ferhat Abbas: "Now is the time to negotiate. We can work out a new kind of relationship between Algeria and France. Even those who are fighting are prepared to find new bonds." The world could only hope...
...VOYEUR, by Alain Robbe-Grillet (219 pp.; Grove; clothbound, $3.50; paperback, $1.75), is based on the author's notion that "the world is neither significant nor absurd. It is. That is the most remarkable thing about it." Proceeding from this Istentialist view, Author Robbe-Grillet, hero of Europe's avant-garde critics, has written a sort of whodunit in which the question of whodunit is never answered. To a French offshore island comes Mathias, a watch salesman. Little is told about him, but it is soon plain that he is close to insanity and that his special aberration...
Toward Manhattan. At first everyone, including much of the Danish press, pooh-poohed Denmark's decision, and some nations openly hooted. A spokesman for the French Atomic Energy Commissariat pronounced it "extraordinary and absurd in view of the fact that the crew has lived aboard the Skate for so long with no sign of contamination." Officials in The Netherlands and West Germany said they would be delighted to receive Skate. Washington fired off a barrage of reassurances. Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover declared that ''there has been a review of all possible mishaps," and that the submarine...