Word: gorgons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...alone of all Victorian writers belonged to the top aristocracy, has no trouble handling those extra comic confusions that come naturally in a society where everybody seems to be related to everybody else. When he is being funny-for example, minutely recording the malicious troublemaking of an old gorgon ("all husk and fangs") named Lady Midhurst-Swinburne is a pretty funny fellow...
...Palmer's sister, Dr. Honor Klein, a notable witch and anthropologist given to fingering a samurai sword while talking of herself as a severed head (see Freud on Medusa, a character hopefully prompts the reader). Lynch-Gibbon, a glutton for grief, is, of course, transfixed by this menacing Gorgon. By what black psychological thimbleriggery their union is achieved-despite innumerable obstacles of which incest appears to be the least-is too intricate to be described. A mythological key is provided on the novel's last page...
...pagan past. Old Maniots are convinced that Nereids haunt the local fountains, and mothers believe that the three Fates hover over an infant's cradle to write invisible destinies on the child's brow (moles are known as "writings of the Fates"). Seafarers claim that Gorgons grip their caiques in a storm and ask in ringing tones, "Where is Alexander the Great?" If the captain shouts, "Alexander the Great lives and reigns!", the sea turns calm. Otherwise, the Gorgon tilts the boat toward sea bottom, and all hands drown...