Word: breathless
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...tragedy. But even milestones can erode with the years and weather. Depression America is not Recession America; economic determinism is no longer in literary style. The ranch hands who surround George and Lennie are types rather than characters, and the stagecraft contains all the ungainly devices of yesteryear: the breathless entrances, the lamplit confessionals, the contrived pathos that redeems criminal actions...
Weldon turns this downbeat visit into a romp. Whenever self-pity threatens the characters, another flashback washes it away. If these juxtapositions of past and present sometimes seem too easily ironic, the novel's breathless pace discourages dawdling over flaws. Its humor is wicked, in the manner of Waugh, whose comedy was also of matters as well as manners. The characters' resiliency is not less heroic for taking wacky forms. As Weldon proved in Down Among the Women (1973), she loves her sex because, not in spite of itself. ∙Paul Gray
Godard's Pierrot le Fou, 6 and 9:30; Breathless, 7:55, weekends...
Chukhrai does not hesitate to create sentimental scenes: Shura and Alyosha waving to each other as his train pulls away, Alyosha's mother running breathless and perspiring from her work in the fields to greet him. But somehow, in this context, anything less than sentimentality would be unsatisfactory. War has torn a society apart, and for a few brief moments its victims are struggling to recapture a past forever lost, or discover experiences never known. Absent is the business-as-usual optimism of most American films about the Second World War. There is a sense in Ballad of a Soldier...
...message in More Joy. I like your idea that we shouldn't call them "orgies" any more but merely "sharing." After all, who's against sharing? I can believe it when you say that everyone comes back from an orgy-oops, I mean from a sharing -feeling "breathless, guiltless and ready to return to propriety." Maybe that's because "the main expedience in sharing is quietude, and the intention is sensual rather than sexual." I must say I don't really get this, probably because I am just a housewife, but it sounds uplifting...