Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...State Department dismissed the charges as "absurd." But Washington was plainly concerned about the safety of the 60 Baptists. The arrests came only a few days after Castro executed a customs official accused of giving Cuban export figures to the U.S.-a far less serious offense than the crimes imputed to the Baptists...
...book is a pot boiler--implausible, silly, absurd. The critics, more patronizing than venomous, they were right. It is a joke. A good joke, and even Norman knew we would laugh, with its superhero hero, outrageous farce situations. Or a grotesque joke, so ugly with violence and incest and morbid broodings and salacious psychopathology; a joke in bad taste...
...forest went up in flames-precisely as U.S. planners had figured. Then came the sort of absurd disaster for which the Viet Nam war has become famous. The intense heat of the Boiloi boil caused the wet, tropical air overhead to condense into giant thunderclouds. The "thermal convective condition," as U.S. Air Force meteorologists later defined it, triggered a drenching downpour that doused the forest fire and left Boiloi's Viet Cong safe and unsinged in their caves...
...There are drunk scenes that spin with laughter and nausea. There are battle scenes crackling with the unreality of sudden death. And at the end, the Germans scale the castle walls, while the gargoyles scream and drops of blood blossom like roses. Superbly and movingly, the men of the absurd 314th Replacement Cadre die. For what? Perhaps four hours' stemming of the German onslaught...
...Three characters on a suspension bridge, suffering garrulously from every known brand of self-pity. Theater of the absurd? Certainly, but the flawless comic acting talents of Anne Jackson, Alan Arkin and Eli Wallach make it hilarious...