Word: fiendishness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Doctor tries to carry out his fiendish experiment, a fight breaks out and the laboratory catches on fire. Allen and Helen manage to escape, but so does the result of one of the doctor's experiments--a giant breast that flops through the countryside like a Japanese science fiction monster. But Allen tells Helen not to worry, because "he knows how to handle tits" and they rush off to the Sheriff's office. Eventually a plan is devised where Allen lures the stalking breast into a trap-a gigantic bra. But even after the breast is captured, the Sheriff remains...
Despite such malevolent connections, Satan remained a temptingly attractive figure. Milton made him such a hero that next to him Christ looked almost pallid. Faust's fiendish friend, Mephistopheles, is one of literature's great protagonists. It is no new thing for the Rolling Stones to conjure up Sympathy for the Devil. He had it long ago, even from so famous a church father as Origen, who speculated that Satan and his fallen angels would be saved at the end of time...
...play the game again. The habits of our minds force us to once again look for the "explanation" for the events we see. In The Birthday Party, one could explain McCann's and Goldberg's actions as a fiendish underworld plot to get Stanley. Here it's just as simple: Ruth must have been a prostitute when Teddy married her (the suggestion is made several times in the play). Perhaps Teddy has brought her to Europe to work out the unresolvable differences between them, has failed in his efforts, and is now willing to let the family solve his problem...
...limits and worth in view of its author's career and its readers' lives. While Sheed is intent on letting the novel speak for itself, his writing undercuts and bolsters his subject at appropriate turns: "But enough meaning is enough. The book can also be read simply as a fiendish compendium of exurban manners--the dinner party scenes, the protocol of adultery, the care and neglect of children..." And though Sheed's opinions are hard-edged, he is never pedantic, or in any other way academic...
...first visit to the Reichian therapist, Bean was given a fiendish massage that searched out every sore spot in his body and tortured it. He went home black and blue, but breathing deeper than he had in years. Breath is energy, the therapist explained, and the first object of Reichian therapy is to build up a huge reserve of energy in the chest...