Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Dumbwaiter and The Collection, by Harold Pinter. In these two one-acters, Britain's most provocative dramatist puts his characters in an enigmatic rat's maze where they twist, turn and stumble, seeking each other and the truth with absurd and terrifying results...
...would be absurd to describe Elliott simply as "colorful." He is so much more than a Southern gentleman; he is a deep reflection of great influences, of the acute perception of Fugitive writers and the clear-eyed morality of his tutor, A.D. Lindsay. At Harvard, he has never let his influences lie content within him, but sharpened and polished them for his friends and students. It is a lucky thing that his retirement keeps him with us, for he himself is above all a teacher, greatly influential...
...ambiguities that empty the spirit. His heroes endure events that seem to mirror their experience, but in fact are tantalizing opposites that contradict everything they know. In The Trial Kafka's hero asserts his innocence until echoes of his own voice convince him of his guilt. Life becomes absurd in a universe whose nature is that guiltless men shall be punished. Kafka never knew the totalitarian state that his intuition prefigured. But he knew the weight and layers of a hostile environment. He was brought up in the ghetto of the German-speaking Jews of Prague, surrounded by hostile...
...Camus's great expense), he notes the obvious distinctions in the work of two writers often compared: what Camus says in Olympian detachment, Kafka says in nervous excitement ; where Camus needs crisis to show man's decay, Kafka is content with indolence; in Camus the characters are absurd, but in Kafka it is the universe...
...absurd rhyme gives it the sound of a jingle thought up by the College outline series as a mnemonic gadget for students who must know the philosopher's main preoccupations. Even at that, it is confused and ineffectual. When I learn of belief clattering, I want to know more, to hear the clatter more distinctly; instead I am handed myth swooning, a concept at least equally vacuous...