Word: humorous
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...DANCE OF GENGHIS COHN, by Romain Gary. The classic Jewish gambit-finding macabre humor in extreme tribulation-is used with uncommon originality in this allegorical novel of genocide and national guilt...
...parts thrust on him in ten years as a successful movie actor. He has gone further than merely not casting himself in his first try at directing; he has cast no one remotely like himself--no slick stars--and given his actors no slick dialogue. With a little more humor and a lighter touch all around, Newman could become a really good direcor, though maybe not to the point of contributing more to a picture as director than actor. So it might in any case not be worth the effort...
...example: "I always try to write only about happy things." Replied Solzhenitsyn: "The task of the writer is to treat universal and eternal themes: the mysteries of the heart and conscience, the collision between life and death, the triumph over spiritual anguish." He told his accusers with bitter humor that he knew very well what such views could mean for him. "I am alone, my slanderers are hundreds," he said. "Naturally I will never succeed in defending myself, and I cannot know in advance of what I will be accused. If they say I am a supporter of Copernicus' solar...
...even Krock would welcome. The nation is, as he describes it, quite obviously torn and tormented by the problems of an age more complex than man has ever known. Yet not even Krock is convinced that his rumblings of impending doom should be taken full strength. With the innate humor he seldom displayed in 60 years of portentous prose, he recalls in his memoirs the advice once offered him by Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Cheer up, Arthur. Things have seldom been as bad as you said they were...
Petition, for example, is a powerfully conceived, expertly executed traditional story about a Siamese twin who believes that his brother is planning to kill him. By turns funny and pathetic, it shudders with the paranoia that ensues when one loses his sense of humor about an unalterable condition. Title is an experimental fiction that is the last word in self-consciousness as a literary mode. The protagonist is the story itself, continually stumbling over its own beginning, middle and end, and recovering to see if anybody is still watching. "To acknowledge what I'm doing while...