Word: comical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ready smile, muscles taut from gym work, autumnal hair with a fine early frost. He could be a cousin of his fellow Rocky Mountain resident Robert Redford. Then look closer and find a superhero's face as it might have been drawn by Wallace Wood for a Mad comic- book parody. The jawline, a shade too prominent, entertains the rumor of buffoonery. The smile is one of unwarranted self-assurance. His eye squint seems not to have registered that the world sees him differently: as a preening oaf. With every gesture he is screaming, Help! I'm a clown trapped...
...these are signals sent out by Steve Martin, who is too smart and funny to be fit for a movie idol's straitjacket. He began, in the early 1970s, as a stand-up comic with an unusual persona: a guy determined against all odds -- lack of charm or talent, for example -- to be the life of the party. In his first movies too he made mock of his Waspy features by playing dimwits and cuckolds. Would he restrict himself to updating Jerry Lewis when he could be Cary Grant? Not at all. For with Pennies from Heaven Martin essayed nostalgic...
Although he hardly wants for honors (three National Book Awards, the Nobel Prize for Literature), Saul Bellow has not always been appreciated for his comic gifts. That may be because his books and reputation can appear so intimidating. When a serious, renowned writer tosses out big ideas, the proper response seems to be a hushed, respectful concentration. But at least as far back as Herzog (1964), Bellow began putting the act of thinking through some antic paces. Moses Herzog was the first, but not the last, of the author's heroes to suffer the risible torments of the hypereducated...
Actively campaigning for a comic strip character, and a 'possum at that, may at first glance seem to be the height of sophomoric absurdity. Whether the Pogo Riot served merely as a forum in which restless College students could release pent-up energies or whether it was indicative of a social and political restlessness remains an issue for debate...
...Crimson, normally a bastion of liberalism, fail to back Adlai Stevenson, one of the most respected liberal politicians of his time? Why, instead, did it choose to endorse a comic strip character? Was it all just a joke...