Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...self conscious existence; Camus did it; you can too. Or you might try that old excuse for tired minds, social realism, in which the victim complains loudly about his socially induced illnesses, thereby proving himself a healthy individual. (Remember, the social realist cannot at any time recognize the laughter down the block, or the guffaws around the corner, for fear they are aimed in his direction.) Insist on the real, the organic, the authentic in an insincere and alien world, and remember, all grins must be grim. There shall be no deviation in our long march to universal self-fulfillment...
...Laughter is a spontaneous, and by definition, involuntary spasm of mind and body, a confluence of intellect and instinct in a moment of revelation. This is why written humor, deprived of an active context, so often fails. This is why the expression "Ha-ha" appears so pathetic on the page. This is why laying down "laugh-tracks" on sit-coms is like forcing an elephant to do the Hokey-Pokey while spanning the rails in Park St. Under (a game young hooligans call "Shredding the Elephant"). The attempt to institutionalize anarchy deprives anarchy of its essence, and like all large...
Underlying Chaucer's sturdy, balanced genius, Gardner sees a characteristically medieval conviction that the world made sense. Chaucer viewed man as a "responsible, moral agent in a baffling but orderly universe." Yet his finest work was full of ironical laughter; a "canterbury tale," in medieval slang...
...fact, most of the male characters come off poorly in The Thorn Birds. A fairly typical sentence runs: "She eyed his flaccid penis, snorting with laughter." The ambitious men are silly and the steady ones are inconsequential. Meggie's eight brothers either die or disappear into the woodwork. Women seem to live forever, while every hundred pages or so another man is burned alive or disemboweled by a wild boar or drowned or unsexed by gunshot wounds. None of this carnage is required by the plot. The males are punished because their punishment is what romantic fiction requires...
...twinkling piece of innocent bawdry has come to Broadway. The Ethel Barrymore Theater has been invaded by the ripple of laughter, thoroughly beguiling tunes and saucily intelligent lyrics. The story line is as nonchalant as unrequited sin. It concerns a would-be ménage à quatre: two couples who want to plunge into liberated mutual sexuality but only manage to get their toes...