Word: humoristic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...France, and notably disapproves of U.S. policy in Viet Nam. But elsewhere the "little brother" complex is strengthened by the limitations of Canadian culture. Canada has produced no artists or writers of truly international rank. The only Canadian authors who have achieved renown in the U.S. are the late humorist Stephen Leacock and, currently, Prophet Marshall McLuhan. One difficulty is that Canadian artists, once they begin to succeed, tend to leave their country, a phenomenon described by 19th century Poet Charles G. D. Roberts after he himself moved abroad...
McLuhan believes that learning has traditionally been a glum affair, aimed at "serious" students. The most effective weapon for attacking the contemporary environment, he says, is humor. The humor he uses is often outlandish, but this is hardly surprising when one considers that the humorist is a romantic-revolutionary-reactionary who believes that the "science-fiction" technology of the present and future will enable us to recreate a beautiful and protective past...
...knows that ideas make the best parlor games. Earth's books, whatever their shortcomings, cry out not merely to be read but to be played with. His friend, Novelist and Critic Leslie Fiedler, enthusiastically calls Earth "an existentialist comedian." The description is apt, for Earth is essentially a humorist who believes that it is absurdly comical to take anything too seriously, including himself. His books bubble with back-alley sexual humor that derides the solemnity of love. Earth's characters are never cast as heroes: there is something slightly ludicrous about them all. That...
Robert Nelson, 36, a 6-ft. 3-in. San Franciscan, is a black-and-blue humorist who made one of the comic classics of the experimental cinema. Oh, Dem Watermelons is a daffy documentary about all the horrible things that can happen to watermelons. They get kicked like footballs, gutted like chickens, smashed on sidewalks, slashed with ice skates, riddled by bullets, split open and rubbed over the bodies of beautiful women. The monstrous irrelevance of it all is fracturingly funny-until suddenly the spectator realizes that the watermelon is meant to symbolize the Negro...
Still, Lyndon Johnson suffers from one further problem: Lyndon Johnson. "The prevailing weakness of most public men is to slop over," Humorist Artemus Ward wrote a century ago. "G. Washington never slept over." The pun aside, Ward stated a problem that has plagued the President all along, and now threatens to overshadow his truly impressive domestic record. He does slop over. He speaks-or preaches-with the accents of the Depression in an age of prosperity. His rustic reminiscences seem irrelevant to a predominantly urban electorate. At 58, Johnson is roughly midway in age between Bobby Kennedy...