Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Raisin might be somber, or merely sentimental, if its milieu were not so sharply observed, its speech so flavorful, and its infectious sense of fun so caustic. Much of the laughter wells up around Beneatha, a girl of earnest intellectual fads. When a Nigerian boy friend introduces her to a bit of African lore, she promptly decks herself out as "the queen of the Nile," and whirls across the room to click off a jazz program ("Enough of this assimilationist junk...
...within himself what held the sun and stars and planets in their courses, but could not find his way and purposes among the nearer things. He had to have, somewhere in the world, a place of perfection of his own, though it should be only the little one of laughter, of surprise, only the illusion of fruit upon a table rich with the juices of summer...
...There are three things which are real," Indian-Irish Author Aubrey Menen once wrote, "God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third." Urbane Satirist Menen has siphoned laughter out of stuffy pukka sahibs (The Prevalence of Witches') and sacred Hindu myths (The Ramayana). Rarely has his comic touch been lighter or more impolite than in this current spoof on science...
...frivolous Londoners, Marko seems just another glamorous eccentric, sent to amuse and thrill them with his daring antics. When, one evening, Marko appears at a reception and a rough voice bellows from the audience, "What about Varga, Lener, Goldfink?", everyone rocks with laughter at what seems an inexplicable joke. But as the months pass and the unreal festival approaches, the names of the mysterious trio keep echoing through London. Finally, a bomb of accusation bursts, in the form of the question: Did Marko make his first millions by selling his three compatriots to the Gestapo...
...quieter moods of such a song as Scarlet Ribbons he may stand perfectly straight, his head and shoulders pinned by the spotlight, lips eloquently pursed. In Sinner's Prayer, his face contorts in anguish; in Mark Twain it breaks wide in gutty laughter. When he attacks Love, Love Alone, a comic number, he often throws his arms wide, pivots in an arc from the waist and wobbles his head to the rhythm while he delivers the calypso lyrics with an impudent grin...