Word: absurdities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sympathically, Wedekind nevertheless wrote a morality play. The characters are not human beings but types and all receive their just deserts by the final curtain. However, no sense of optimism or serene belief in retribution lighten the atmosphere of depravity and despair. The world remains cold, detached, evil--and absurd...
...sister Abby, who clomps "the treacherous hike from the bathroom to the kitchen linoleum" in hiking boots; his twice-divorced mother; and her balding lover Henry, whom Billy catches poring over nymphet glossies in a porn shop. Epstein is at his best with fresh comic perceptions of growing up absurd in a multiparent home. He is at his weakest in describing Billy's moony infatuation with Zizi, which leads to the novel's adolescent denouement...
...advent of sound, film comedies became merely photographic recordings of funny dialogue and burlesque situations which could be effectively mounted on the stage. Even comedies of the 30's (including those made by the Marx Brothers which were unique in their own way) continued to exploit non-verbal, absurd gags. More contemporaneous comedians such as Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers and Mel Brooks also rely heavily on verbal puns and physical mise-en-scene, yet still with no attempt made to convey it in cinematic terms. In contrast, Woody Allen has gradually and continously cultivated a singular approach to the comedy...
...thing, the growth of regulation is waning. "We have had this orgy of regulation over the past few years," she says. "We have regulated the hell out of everything-the environment, health and safety. We have gone to absurd lengths." The Government's inflation-terrified economists are passionately battling the regulators, who Rivlin feels are a bit hysterical in defending their turf. "But," she notes, "nobody says that we want to deregulate everything. Gradually, the regulatory excesses are being sorted...
Russell Baker's sustaining grace as a columnist is his remarkable repertory of styles and voices. One outing he will be just plain funny, calling up chuckles out of the absurd. The next time he will be an essayist, meditating on some social turn, usually for the worst. He can be wickedly satirical, his prose a dangerously lulling parody of the sort of nonsense that passes for sober commentary in too much of the press. And finally he can be a nostalgic, almost lyrical stylist. Examples of Baker in four moods and modes...