Word: foppishness
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...CAREFULLY AS HE has molded Ellello*u out of fiery words and fanatic ideas, Updike has created a supporting cast of splendid variety. Ellello*u's foppish political opponents, his wispy and wisely degenerate king, his seductive and bitchy and monstrous wives, all create an atmosphere of debauched craziness tempered by childlike seriousness. This aura is, in turn, scientifically punctured by the sickeningly helpful middle-Americans and mysterious vodka-guzzling Russians who emerge from the shadows to help separate the dictator from his people. Blending caricature and truth, Updike thus manages a type of satire that helps heal over with...
...Four Hundred took their name from the dictum of the foppish writer Ward McAllister, who claimed in 1888 that there were only about 400 people in fashionable New York society who were at ease in a ballroom. Often tempered by a disarming folksiness. When a Yankee visitor, on meeting Chief Justice Susie Marshall Sharp of the North Carolina Supreme Court, asked how she was addressed, she replied: "Everyone just calls me Judge Susie...
...these officials live by deceit, they are slaves of self-deception. Trying to identify the incognito inspector, they settle on a newcomer at the local hotel who has overdrawn his credit and is foppish, imperious and curious. Actually, Ivan Alexandrovich Khlestakov (Max Wright) is a petty clerk who has gone broke gambling. When the mayor approaches him, Khlestakov assumes that he is about to be thrown into jail. As the mutual misconceptions multiply, the fun flies like...
...keep his wife shut away from the temptations of the town prove ineffectual in deterring his wife's simple-minded quest for a good time. Meanwhile, there are all sorts of subplots and subthemes, including the rake Harcourt's wooing of Pinchwife's sister, Alithea, away from her foppish fiance, Sparkish...
...Food gives real meaning to dining room furniture . . . Children are rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money ... If God had meant for everything to happen at once, he would not have invented desk calendars . . . Sleep is death without the responsibility." It is a foppish wit that is very conscious of taste, class and sexual pre dilections, but Lebowitz herself remains an elusive target. Her easy cynicism and airy misanthropy have no fixed center, and though many of her riffs are spontaneously funny, too many others are arch and heavy with intention...