Word: mythic
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...however, is one of literature's certified mandarins, known as an explicator of Ulysses (Re Joyce), a postapocalyptic moralist (A Clockwork Orange), and a scholar showily at home in a double handful of ancient and modern languages. He wigwags strenuously at the outset of this new novel that primal, mythic stuff is ahead -- ancient tales threading through the dark, tribal roots of 20th century bloody-mindedness...
BEFORE The Bald Magic Hamlet begins, director Mark Prascak explains that his adaptation--which combines Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Shakespeare's Hamlet-- means to show that the plays are related through "parallel mythic structures" and that the three authors were probably drunk "and you should be too." Then he offers each member of the audience a beer...
...mythic parallels, it is possible that there are similarities between Hamlet and Flute's Tamino (also played by Aron) or between Hamlet's Queen Gertrude and the Queen of the Night. However, the play doesn't really explore these similarities, and the decision to unite these three works remains a mystery...
...concerns extend well beyond these. He is convinced that major league baseball plays a bardic, mythic role in American society; the long, recurring seasons are an ongoing epic, Homeric or Vergilian or Dantesque, a vital locus of rapt assembly where enduring values are enacted and passed on. "The game is such a wonderful mix between the individual and the community," he says. "The struggle between the pitcher and batter throws these two isolated competitors into lonely relief. But the purpose of that confrontation is for the team, the benefit of the larger group...
...that matter, are personalities.) But the emotions Bush is stirring up in the name of American patriotism are ugly and -- dare I say it -- un- American. What unites the pledge nonsense, the furlough business, the attacks on the American Civil Liberties Union, the scare stories about a race of mythic bogeymen called liberals is an effort to induce a fever of "us" vs. "them" majoritarianism...