Word: modern
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...True, they are as difficult as thinking about life; but if what is meant by "difficult" is that he is obscure or diffuse or private in his passion for understanding, I think that it is wrong to characterize him so. What he seems to be about is creating a modern mythology, like Grass or Berryman, that resonates within the being of a modern person. Part of the unacceptability of the classical myths as metaphor for modern life seems to stem from their very inaccessibility to most people, who are first not scholars, and second, are simply unable to divest themselves...
...Rehearsal takes place at a chateau in modern France, whose owner is staging an amateur production of an eighteenth century melodrama, Marivaux's The Double Inconstancy. The Count insists that his fellow players--including his wife, his mistress, his wife's lover--wear their period costumes during the three-day rehearsal period so that they can grow into their roles. The result is something like an interminable cast party hosted by Stanislavsky...
...real problem with Anouilh is that--for all his painful honesty--he's really more naive than his modern audience. Most of The Rehearsal's third act is a long debate between innocence and corruption. Too long. I knew corruption would win, it always does. I think I even wanted it to win. After all we've been through during the past year, it's pretty difficult for me to hold any truck with feigned innocence, especially when it's held on to so stubbornly. Anouilh is best when he's simply being stylishly bitchy. There are probably enough...
...soften the horror of this mind-fuck, society, has set up a new earth-mother of its own--television. The boy had often sat for hours at a time watching the images flicker before him. Here, indeed, was the goddess of the modern world; here was the new muse calling, the muse of totally destructive mindlessness. Hour after hour, he could stare at the grey screen, giving himself to it; and he was grateful to it because it made him stop thinking, it took over his mind, and gave him the peace of forgetfulness that he could not find...
...seminar, which meets at 9 p.m. on Thursday in Bertram Hall, will focus on "black humor as a modern mode of response to experience," Keeney said. Students in the seminar will read works by such writers as William Faulkner and Samuel Beckett. They also may discuss some of Kafka's writings...