Word: homunculi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nude becomes a lump of hairy pink clay with a pinhead, swagging numbles and a skin so gouged by fissures, cracks and graffiti that it is on the verge of turning into a landscape. The hierarchy of human to animal to vegetable to mineral is abolished; the popeyed homunculi who scurry like moles through his landscapes or rear up, delicately rainbow-tinted like decaying fungi, in paintings such as Extravagant Lady, 1954 (opposite), are mere coalescences in human form. They are not people but slices of life, and in this perversely microscopic sense Dubuffet is a realist painter. The flat...
...homunculi, however awesomely mechanized, remain in the infantile category. In a Minute Thumbelina, seated in a high chair, bangs its cup on the tray and demands to be fed. When Baby Tweak's tummy is squeezed, it coos, and when Drowsy's pullout cord is yanked, it whines things like "Mommy, I want another drink of water" or "Mommy, I want to stay up." Slightly more sophisticated but equally maddening to adults is Timey Tell, which has twelve different messages matched to the hour of the day. Set its wristwatch at 12 and pull its cord...
...Arthur Hailey writes holding-pattern prose. He advances one of his homunculi three-and-a-half pages toward ruin, then puts him in a holding pattern and moves some other character a totter or two toward temptation. But just before the dread jaws of fee-fi-fo-fum snap shut, there is another shift of attention, and the reader must tremble in behalf of a third wretch who has been circling perdition for two chapters, waiting for permission to land...