Word: paganism
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...local color. She provides a narrator (called N) and the English village of Ennistone (N's town), the site of an ancient hot spring where residents and tourists gather daily to bathe and socialize. Legend maintains that this spa has aphrodisiacal powers and was once associated with pagan rites of Venus. Vigilant congregations of Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics and Quakers keep watch on the "unholy restlessness" that periodically seizes Ennistone, a madness lately exemplified by reported sightings of flying saucers and the peculiar behavior of George McCaffrey. The town does not take all the speculation about the automobile incident lightly...
Gore Vidal's novels, plays and essays can be divided roughly into three areas of animosity. The first is the author's belief that Western civilization erred when it abandoned pagan humanism for the stern, heterosexual authority of the Judaeo-Christian patriarchy. See Julian, his 1964 novel about the apostate nephew of Constantino the Great. The second area that draws Vidal's scorn is American politics, which he dramatizes as a circus of opportunism and hypocrisy. See The Best Man; Washington, D.C.; Burr. The most freewheeling disdain is directed at popular culture, macho sexuality and social pretensions...
...conference originated as a response to "a lack of activity among Third World groups at the College and a lack of concern from College administrators for minority issues," said John M. Pagan '83, following the conference...
...Part II (played with acute perceptivity by Gerry Bamman) defines himself by what he does and not by what he is. And what he does is always tainted by easy accommodation and the habit of incessant compromise. He moves from trading slaves out of Charleston, S.C., and shipping pagan idols to China to reigning as a prophet in the Moroccan desert, finally ending up crowned "the Emperor of Self in a Cairo mad house, with a wreath of straw...
...long the county has been dry, but, rather, whether it's ever been dry." One must call upon a distant memory to catch the root of this observance, and that would be the memory of one's response to a parental order to cease a pleasant but pagan dalliance. The result is defiance, brashly executed...