Word: meaninglessness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...centuries in forgotten ruins. It was not until the 1920s, when the great city of Taxila was excavated, that the happy fusion of East and West was generally recognized. Until then, Gandhara's modern British rulers were apt to look upon these remnants of a distant time as meaningless curiosities. Once, when soldiers of the Queen's Own Corps of Guides came upon some ancient reliefs, they decided to use them to decorate the fireplace of their mess hall at Mardan. As might have been expected, smoke begrimed the stones, so the ingenious Guides covered them with...
...Kennedy's West Virginia predicament: he had pegged his campaign to primaries to prove he could be a winner. Yet he stood in danger of being knocked out, or badly hurt, in a state that proved very little about the other 49. The West Virginia primary itself is meaningless. It does not even bind the delegates. Said Kennedy glumly at week's end: "If I lose in West Virginia, it'll just throw the race open to all the contenders-including myself, I believe...
...birdie to tie and two to beat another young star, California's Ken Venturi, 28. Recalls Palmer: "When I came off the 15th green, everybody was cheering. I could hear them, but they weren't getting to me?if I didn't get the bird it was all meaningless to me. On 16, I hit a three-iron to get the ball up to the hole, but I eased off. I didn't want to go over, and I left myself short about 30 ft. I couldn't see the cup because of a roll in the green...
...reminded of the old proverb: 'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' " TV COMMERCIALS: "Why should an actress, no matter how beautiful or talented, know more about an icebox than my wife?" RELIGIOUS PUBLICATIONS: "Most of the so-called devotional material is shallow and meaningless tripe that makes me sick to my stomach." THEOLOGIANS: "Many influential theologians of our day have moved from the ruins of a devastated Europe to the libraries of the theological schools and have carried defeatism into these sacred precincts-locking themselves up in their little cells with their egos, their textbooks...
...refuses to follow suit. (Death is ardently willed and obsessively discussed in Compton-Burnett novels, usually because it is the survivors' only means to get hold oi the estate.) Instead, Uncle Edwin marries a thirtyish neighbor named Rhoda. Since age has made Uncle Edwin's conjugal privileges meaningless, the marriage is a big surprise but, hereditarily speaking, no calamity. In a moment of passion (passion is always momentary in Compton-Burnett), Simon makes it a calamity by adulterously siring a son with Rhoda. Uncle Edwin names the infant Hamish, swears Simon to secrecy, and raises the child...