Word: excessive
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Effluvium is the least amiable excess of which Author Gass is guilty. At his worst he spates obscurities like a jejune Joyce; at his best he generates images like the navel of the demiurge itself. And the images reflect ideas. Gass is a trained thinker, a professor of philosophy at Purdue University, and in this fable he enlivens the weary old war between good and evil with curt communiqués and rakingly comic crossfire...
...excess baggage of war has always included women. Strumpets trailed the trumpets of Joshua at Jericho and marched with the legions of Rome. Sir Gawaine was not the only knight-errant; in one year alone, the Crusaders counted the aid of 13,000 camp followers in their quest for the Holy Sepulcher. In World War I, they were the vivandieres; in Saigon today, the B-girls are called tea girls. Wherever two or three soldiers gather together, prostitutes are sure to flock, adding to the disorder that follows in the wake of armies everywhere...
...Smog. Late last year, Miller pointed out, the Big E raced urgently from the U.S. East Coast to Viet Nam under orders "to maintain a speed in excess of 20 knots the entire 16,000-mile trip. This was accomplished with ease." With refueling delays, a conventional carrier could not have made the voyage at any such forced pace. One night, shortly after arriving in the war theater last December, the Enterprise was told that South Viet Nam's Cam Ranh Bay airfield had been made inoperable by rains, and that the carrier's planes were needed...
...carpet and offers them personal introductions to a champagne magnate. He devotes whole sections to showing them how not to make fools of themselves, how to avoid being cheated, how to act with customs inspectors ("Keep your mouth shut"), and even how to beat the airlines out of excess-luggage charges (stuff heavy articles into coat sleeves, tie knots in the sleeves, carry the coat...
Some of the performances, however, nearly transcend their material. Jack Cassidy as the gossip columnist Max Mencken is unbelievably slick and professional. Michael O'Sullivan hams to a proper excess as a ten-time Nobel Prize loser who takes revenge on the world by trying to destroy its culture-hero, Superman. Bob Holiday's deadpan makes him perfect for the title role...