Word: ghoulishness
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...Memory Picture. Author Mitford's basic argument is that the cult of the prettied-up corpse, put on display in a ghoulish, make-believe sleep, is neither reverent nor religious, but a giant feat of merchandising. She has deadly fun with such astonishing specialists as the Practical Burial Footwear Company of Columbus, Ohio, which offer Fit-a-Fut oxfords (in patent, calf, tan or oxblood) and Ko-Zee, with its "soft, cushioned soles and warm, luxurious slipper comfort, but true shoe smartness." Courtesy Products has a "new Bra-form, Post Mortem Form Restoration . . . they accomplish so much...
...mighty were buried. The bodies are there today, preserved by some forgotten process, still wearing velvet britches and silver buckles. "Some times they look almost alive," says Biddle. "Sometimes the decomposition is almost surrealist with Rembrandtesque light, and sometimes they look like giant insects with their mouths gaping open." Ghoulish as they are, they become in Biddle's hands enormously affecting-creatures caught in a no man's land, having been rejected by life and not yet accepted by death...
Memento Mori. Ann Parker, a handsome blonde whose lively enthusiasm is far from ghoulish, got the idea of immortalizing tombstone carving one weekend after stumbling on a weed-grown graveyard near the hamlet of Colrain, Mass. She and Neal started boning up on New England stonecutters, found that most of them had been Yankee Jacks-of-all-trades who knew how to use chisel and mallet. One stonecutter, John Stevens of Newport, R.I., set up a shop for himself in 1705 that is still in operation after being handed down through generations of stonecutters...
Beside these two first-rate actors, the rest of Director Thom Babe's cast looks ineffectual. This is not true of the servants, Jere Whiting and Stanford Janger: Whiting is if anything too overwhelmingly ghoulish and Janger too cheerfully unaffected by his own enslavement to Hummel. But they are more than competent. The dreadful ineffectuality of this production comes in the third act, after the clashes and climaxes of the play...
Americans in general reacted the same way. Gone from the Florida beaches were the jostling crowds of jittery, prayerful and sometimes ghoulish spectators who watched earlier Mercury flights. Newsmen on the spot neither applauded nor cheered, as before, as the rocket lifted easily into a clear blue sky. Even after Sigma 7 went into orbit, many Americans preferred to watch the Giants and the Dodgers slug it out in their final play-off game...