Word: faustian
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Fleeing to Europe, Grimes meets a Faustian figure (but a Faust with charm) named Fabian, who knows every banker, concierge and con man from Rome to Gstaad. He teaches Grimes, the back slid Protestant moralist, how to increase and enjoy his money. But just as Graham Greene knew, Shaw is aware that the piper must always be paid, that his heroes must eventually return home to separate fates. Although they used to worship at entirely different literary shrines (Hemingway on the one hand, Evelyn Waugh on the other), Shaw and Greene are bonded in contemporary let ters by their ability...
...retelling of the Faust legend. In order to hear it properly performed, the Phantom, as well as his dream singer, must strike similar bargains with Swan, juicily played by Paul Williams, who also composed the film's good score. Swan in turn owes his power to an earlier Faustian deal of his own, a pact that borrows a few wrinkles from Dorian Gray's compact. This repetition reduces contemporary middlebrow mythomania to absurd shambles...
...size of the ape man's brain and his intelligence. Unfortunately, the skull did not increase as fast as the brain, and the resulting pressure distorted man's view of himself as a part of nature. The squeezed-brain syndrome gave rise to man's Faustian saga in which cannibalism became the way to knowledge and power...
...dinners at an ungodly 6:30 p.m. The other half dine happily on leftovers at 9 or 10, misplace bills and file for an extension of the income tax deadline. They seldom pay credit-card bills until the apocalyptic voice of Diners threatens doom from Denver. They postpone, as Faustian encounters, visits to barbershop, dentist or doctor...
...untidy life and death of Malcolm Lowry have provided one of those feverish legends that persist in the literary bloodstream. With good cause. Lowry's was a life that both offends and fascinates-which is to say it excites the voyeuristic instinct. There were his Faustian bouts with alcohol as some kind of sorcerer's abused magic potion. There were his Baudelairean rumblings at the back door to salvation. There was also some basic tight-vested Freudian neurosis and a not quite redeeming sense of irony...