Word: monkishly
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April, la saison des amours for wild life in France, inevitably brings out the bird watchers. Last week one of the oddest sights in the fields and forests was a stocky, monkish fellow in a Basque beret and rimless glasses, cocking an ear to all the amorous twittering, and furiously scribbling music on manuscript paper clipped to a board. It was French Composer Olivier Messiaen, 58, elder statesman of the far-out realm of 20th century music, gathering new themes for his compositions. "Birds are the greatest musicians," he insists. "You will never find in their song a mistake...
...took him only one round to find a brand-new challenger. Discredited as he was by two quick knockouts at the hands of Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, 30, is still one of the most interesting fighters ever to climb into a ring: a problem child, a moody, monkish man who at 21 became the youngest heavyweight champion ever, without even becoming a real heavyweight. Floyd weighed 182¼; lbs. when he knocked out Archie Moore in 1956; for last week's fight he weighed 197¼ lbs., the heaviest of his career-and the bulge of fat around...
Then he would rise from the piano to perform his Monkish dance. It is always the same. His feet stir in a soft shuffle, spinning him slowly in small circles. His head rolls back until hat brim meets collar, while with both hands he twists his goatee into a sharp black scabbard. His eyes are hooded with an abstract sleepiness, his lips are pursed in a meditative O. His cultists may crowd the room, but when he moves among them, no one risks speaking: he is absorbed in a fragile trance, and his three sidemen play on while he dances...
Much of the confusion about the state of Monk's mind is simply the effect of Monkish humor. He has a great reputation in the jazz world as a master of the "put-on," a mildly cruel art invented by hipsters as a means of toying with squares. Monk is proud of his skill. "When anybody says something that's a drag," he says, "I just say something that's a bigger drag. Ain't nobody can beat me at it either. I've had plenty of practice." Lately, though, Monk has been more mannerly and conventional...
Monk was back in the Bentley when the cops arrived, and he held fast to the steering wheel when they tried to pull him out?on the Monkish ground that he had done nothing to deserve their attention. Even though the baroness shrieked to watch out for his hands, the furious cops gave his knuckles such a beating that he bears the lumps to this day. The baroness took the rap for "some loose marijuana" found in the trunk, but after three years' legal maneuvering she was acquitted. No narcotics charges were placed against Monk, but because of the scandal...