Word: absurdities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ralph Freedman, a native of Germany who teaches comparative literature at Princeton, gives the author a fair and thorough hearing; his admiration for Hesse does not prevent his seeing clearly what an absurd and depressing character he could sometimes be. Freedman takes Hesse far too seriously, but perhaps any biographer is bound to, for Hesse was himself a painfully humorless...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question of Hume not by baffling the grader or fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we first note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...attack Israel for refusing to give in to absurd new Egyptian proposals that fly directly in the face of the Camp David agreements [Dec. 25]. But if Taiwan can be abruptly dumped by the U.S. after a friendly relationship that has flourished for almost 30 years, is it any surprise that Israel is hesitant to accept Sadat's two-faced assurances of good intent after 30 years of war? Jeffrey Lipsitz Toronto...
Israel is ready to give up land, military bases and oilfields in the Sinai. In return, she gets peace. Maybe. If, after Israeli withdrawal, there is no progress on other fronts, the peace treaty would be nullified. It would be absurd for Israel to agree to this. MaIke Wartelsky New York City...
...structure is gimmicky, but the contrivance works. The book ensnares the reader with its disjointed collage of witty literary references and snatches of absurd conversation. The characters may be political neophytes, but they are intelligent and believable--a far cry from Cortazar's previous two-dimensional protagonists...