Word: absurdity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Most egregious of all, however, is your statement, either incredibly naive of incredibly uniformed, that "Keating's defeat would be almost meaningless in terms of national politics." This opinion is indeed absurd. Keating's defeat would immediately and most joyously be recognised by the pro-Goldwater forces as the defeat of a dedicated enemy. In the wake of San Francisco, the forces trying to recall the Republican party to its senses are all too weak already; Keating's loss would perhaps be fatal. I hope no one assumes that an all-powerful Democratic party would be fine for the United...
...dons wigs and choirboys' surplices for a spastic rock-'n'-roll number called "I Wanna Hold Your Handel," they memorably spoof both the composer and the Beatles, with a blasting hallelujah! yeah! yeah! The evening ends in a British courtroom with a bewigged theater-of-the-absurd farce-trial involving a dwarf that is hilarious enough all by itself to make the show Broadway's Circus Maximus...
...this fashion, Author Thomas Berger introduces Jack Crabb, who surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed from the Olden Time Fronteer. Berger solemnly declares that Crabb was "either the most neglected hero in the history of this country or a liar of insane proportions." Crabb, in fact, is both, which is just what Berger intended him to be. As relived by Crabb in Berger's telling, the legends and the romanticized history of the West are comically disassembled, like Hamlets seen from backstage. Typical is Crabb's meeting with Wyatt Earp...
Nicol Williamson carries out magnificently a part that is punishingly long and concentrated. Osborne skillfully manages to arrest his hero just on the brink of the absurd-even if his man does persist in viewing others just a bit less flatteringly than they view him. "The whole bloody island is blocked," says the solicitor, "with those flatulent, purblind mating weasels...
That note of despair is the fundamental emotion of the existentialism Sartre was to develop, where God is banished, man is totally responsible for what he does with himself and society, and therefore gets on earth the hell he deserves. Thus man is absurd, but he must grimly act as if he were not. The books and controversies were yet to come; but at the end of this confession, filled with self-loathing though incapable of self-pity, Sartre dryly admits: "For a long time, I took my pen for a sword; I now know we're powerless...