Word: gothic
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GILES GOAT-BOY, by John Barth. A brilliant gothic fun-house fantasy of theology, sociology and sex in which a goat (or is it a boy?) appears as the Messiah of a new religion...
...they have in mind. The little town itself boasts 3,171 inhabitants. Only a two-minute walk from grazing cows and wheat fields, it has four cafés, none of which will ever make the pages of Michelin. Chièvres' chief offerings are a 16th century Gothic chapel and a brewery...
Smiling but Silent. On opening night, however, the wondering quickly turned to wonder. Seated at the foot of the altar in the Gothic Saint-Pierre Church, Schneider, Serkin and Casals played Beethoven's Trio in E-Flat Major with a passion that made no concession to age. Casals' luminous tone filled the vast church like waves of sunlight, touching the life's breath of the music. At concert's end, the audience of 1,000 rose from the hardwood pews smiling but silent-the only tribute allowed in the church. Later, when the old man walked...
...assistant's wife, the kiddies express themselves by plotting blackmail and even murder, and a member of the staff releases inhibitions by decapitating cats. Masters too often manufactures sensations instead of making sense, but he can summon remarkable talents for projecting character and transmitting an atmosphere of educational gothic...
John Barth, college English teacher and a leading comic of the theater of black humor, now makes with his academic robes like Mephistopheles-or perhaps Batman. Out tumbles a gothic fun-house fantasy of theology, sociology and sex, leaping across great tracts of human history. Fascism, Communism, recent wars, revolutions and the East-West split are played back in surrealist style. Practically every philosophy is put in the pillory. Barth contrives to blaspheme against, and maybe illuminate, both Judaism and Christianity, as well as the central tenet of 20th century humanism-that all life can be accounted for in terms...