Word: absurder
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...humorous aspects of premeditated murder are almost identical with those of custard-pie comedy: connoisseurs of both can enjoy the victim's splendid initial innocence, his growing disbelief and alarm, and, finally, his absurd response to the inexorable offices of fate. It takes a trained mind to really appreciate the drolleries of the rubout, however; when the gaudiest murder of the year was staged one morning last week in the barber shop of Manhattan's Park Sheraton Hotel, nobody in the U.S. was as well qualified to enjoy its subtleties as bulky, greying Albert Anastasia-onetime Lord High...
Barchester in Russia. Then comes the switch. Stalin is posthumously purged by Khrushchev & Co., and the spiral of official truth spins into reverse. Simochka, it appears, was right all along. T.T. is back in the center of his absurd universe, and the bribes fly back from the terrified recipients. Thus Novelist Grinioff extracts ribald comedy from his central theme: under tyrannous government, humanity exists in the corruption of its officials. It is human crookedness that can best the inhuman game...
...Madness of Excess. Operating from the underlying premise that God does not exist, Camus argued in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) that the certainty of death made life itself a ridiculous charade, and therefore "absurd." He likened man's lot to the somber task of the Greek mythic hero Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a huge boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it roll down again, to the end of time. But from this recognition Camus drew his own peculiar sustenance: "Crushing truths perish by being acknowledged," i.e., knowledge...
...Radcliffe Administration wants the girls to be treated as equals with Harvard men and at the same time demand that all joint organizations have at least one Radcliffe officer. This is absurd. If the girls are our equals, let them compete as such. But past experience has shown that one Radcliffe girl can prove the downfall of innumerable members of Harvard College. They don't need any official help...
...draw the line where farce ceases to convince. Gail Jones and Phyllis Ferguson were the two ambitious young ladies, and they went through all the motions, but somehow left the impression that they did not believe in it themselves, and farce surely requires the talent to be earnestly absurd, rather than merely posturing. Misses Jones and Ferguson seemed a bit too liberal with gestures, but perhaps this was a fault of the direction. The whole performance gives the impression of too conscious movement...