Word: luridness
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Eleven crimson and eleven silver flecks of light danced under an indigo mist in the lurid last minutes of a Harvard-Brown game that held 23,000 at Harvard Stadium entranced on Saturday afternoon...
Especially in the middle of the novel, Gordon's prose--saturated with adjectives; empty, if not revolting characters; and lurid sexual details--reads like something out of Mademoiselle or Ladies' Home Journal (in both she has published short stories). but when Margaret, Isabel's old housekeeper, reappears towards the end, the writing tightens up again. Margaret practically embodies that stubborn, un-American subculture, which the author seems to identify with Catholicism. Even if Final Payments lacks a clear message and Mary Gordon's language often crumples under the weight of her cliches, at least one gets the sense...
Davis' trial last summer for the murder of young Andrea lasted 20 weeks, the longest and most expensive murder trial in Texas history. It involved lurid testimony about sex and drug orgies at the mansion, all designed to discredit Priscilla's testimony against her husband. He was acquitted and released on $325,000 bail to await trial for the other shootings. But before the second trial could start, McCrory went to the FBI with his tale of the hit list. It included, besides Judge Eidson, the wounded family friend, "Bubba" Gavrel, who at the first trial had fingered...
...centuries, opera librettists snubbed The Duchess of Malfi. The cut was unkind, since her tragic tale is the very stuff of grand opera. John Webster's play, published in 1623, is admirably lurid and complicated. There is the Duchess's secret and forbidden marriage to her steward Antonio. There are her two evil brothers: Ferdinand, who is driven mad by incestuous passion for her; and the Cardinal, who schemes to be Pope. After her marriage is discovered, the Duchess is imprisoned and tormented by madmen. At the end, everyone dies violently...
Illuminating this lurid world is equally unsettling music. Oliver, who studied electronic music at Oxford, composed his Duchess for an undergraduate production in 1971 and revised it last year. The opera opens with a blaring cacophony of brasses and winds. Voice and orchestra lines seem to begin and end with little regard for each other. Only once, in the final act, does Oliver use a straightforward melodic passage. A chorus of madmen, a ghoulish group in feathers and rags, sings an elegant baroque masque to the imprisoned Duchess (Soprano Pamela Myers). The contrast between stately chords and hideous faces...