Word: illusionality
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Thanks to Rattigan's theatrical flair and the lacerating honesty of John Mills's portrayal of Lawrence, the play carries one along with its promise of some ultimate disclosure of character. The central illusion holds: this could be Lawrence, this could be the Arabian desert. The high-noon...
Limited Uses. These are small pegs for optimism, but they do suggest that the "new nations" are very far from lost either to the West or to reason. They have amply proved that they have no special claim to moral superiority simply because they are small or neutral. They are...
Marx Bros. Plus Myths. After Beckett, the absurdist message is crystallized: life is a tragic farce. The absurdist reasoning goes like this: death makes any act of life futile, hence farcical, the funny side of absurdity. But if "God is dead," as Nietzsche proclaimed and the theater of the absurd...
Perhaps sensing the inadequacy of his argument, however, Piel descends to another level to bolster it. Here he is--for better and for worse--on more familiar ground: civil defense is an illusion because it rests on "a delicate paradox," that while its purpose is to minimize the loss of...
Thus it will seem to an American audience that he relies too heavily on his readers' assumed sympathy as his binding thread. He will confirm, but he will not convince. (It is worth remembering, however, that he is writing in an English journal, for an audience that is more skeptical...