Word: paled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Somehow in the midst of uneasiness and sadness, the novel sparkles with the humor of the surreal (in one exchange, Lily asks Ronny "What did you do to yourself?" and is met with "Oh. I caught fire.") and with unusual imagery (Lily is called "every inch a Sea Monkey... Pale and alien and underwater"). But while the bleak humor is generated by the peculiarities of the characters, there is a definite authorial love for the seemingly unlovable characters, a love which transfers to the reader...
...quality--potential jokes are left unexploited while the existent ones lack the sharpness of revision. Like the movie Wag the Dog, the premise of Compleat Works is loaded with humorous potential that remains largely unmined. Lines like "a nose by any other name would still smell" are funny but pale when compared to the sardonic text-twisting of Tom Stoppard's comparable Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead...
...Pale, fleshy groupies surround him on all sides, adoration in their eyes. Some are overwhelmed, speechless in his presence. Some ask for his autograph; some just want to thank him for all that he's done for them. Some call him a god and want to be among his disciples, helping spread the word...
...city of such overripe simulacra, whose most characteristic museum is dedicated to the memory of Liberace, what room is there for the clean, piercing, complex presence of real works of art? Not much, you'd think. Any public work of art is apt to pale to invisibility beside those neon signs and huge, crass, mock-Hellenistic sculptures. Nothing a mere environmental sculptor could make would have much luck in drawing the eye away from, say, the outside of the Mirage, with its foaming waterfalls and its artificial volcano that erupts on a regular schedule after dusk, except when (a sign...
...farcical to hear the expressions of shock by members of Congress. I was a summer intern in the U.S. Senate during college, and I can tell you some sex stories about both Democratic and Republican Congressmen that would make the salacious details of Monica and Bill pale by comparison. The Starr report is a political hatchet job by a partisan bounty hunter who has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. BYRON B. MATHEWS JR. Coconut Grove...