Word: joking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...popular magazines and on television. Can anyone tell the difference between "Matt Houston" and "Magnum P.I."? Between "Dynasty and "Dallas"? Between People and Us magazines? We joke about what schlock is printed in the National Enquirer, and then watch the schlocky "Entertainment Tonight." No difference. I realize people watch these shows as a kind of fantasy to escape the unpleasantness of the real world, but look at the winners we've picked to escape...
...this work, Sartre betrays himself as a multi-dimensional "Superman" of sorts. He is a very human human-being, an intellectual, a scholar, a lover and a poet. The Diaries reveal Sartre not only as a man able to joke, but as one concerned with his physical being, even with such silly, unimportant things as his physical appearance. He talks of his need to diet, while betraying his concern that he is not strong enough to stick to it. "What am I to do?" he asks himself. "Drink up, thinking: I'll start my diet tomorrow, today it's impossible...
...actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses ... in other words ... when Ronald Reagan appointed as Deputy Secretary of State a man who could not name the Prime Minister of South Africa, some Sunday newspaper satirist somewhere in America was groaning at having his joke ruined by the legally constituted authorities...
...Noise is not some peevish tabloid revision of 1984. The book never stays sour and it never makes the tiring (because irrefutable) claim that TV has become the average man's Big Brother. Instead, DeLillo writes like a stand-up comedian building variations around a central 326-page-long joke. The media, neo-angst about World War 111, and trendy consumer society constitute one large punching bag, and the deadpanned oneliners seem endless. DeLillo has the greatest sense of the macabre since Poe, although without the ravenous-knock-your-house-down-bury-you-alive doom and gloom...
DeLillo has written six other novels, and if they're anywhere near as good as this one he must be used to elaborate critical praise. But he probably wouldn't appreciate learned. NewYork Times Book Review style praise as much as some kind of zany practical joke snuck, into his television...