Word: passione
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Alan's aliveness that Dysart cannot bear, the fact that his worship of Equus gives meaning to his existence: "That boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt at any moment of my life...and I'm envious." Caught under Alan's spell, Dysart--who dreams of the Delphic oracle and eagles bearing prophecies--can think of nothing more monstrous than "taking away someone's worship." But, as a shrink, he is the self-proclaimed high priest of the God Normal. He must exorcise the boy's vital spirits, the phantasms of "insanity" that bring Alan...
...case of almost childlike mutual dependency. A psychiatrist insists that men kill because it is only through murder that one can totally possess another. He warns that Peter must now be regarded as a potential suicide because, having murdered his wife's surrogate in an enactment of possessive passion, he must now kill himself in order finally to possess himself as well...
There are plenty of funny moments in this happy hangover of a play, but in groping for satire, Wilson achieves parody. Satire demands moral passion; Fifth of July has no fire on its breath, only a tart tongue in its cheek...
...this philosophy rests behind most of Roth's and Elkin's best work: The worst is yet to be, so watch out. The disasters that befall Roth heroes are chiefly sexual; well-educated, pampered men, they try to be moral and high-minded while writhing as passion's play things. Expecting life to resemble "high art," they are constantly outraged to find themselves crawling through "low actuality." A scene from the marriage of Maureen and Peter Tarnopol in My Life as a Man is screamingly typical: "Then, on hands and knees, she crawled into the living room...
...example, must cope with a large female Kamchatkan brown bear, in heat. In The Dick Gib son Show (1971) a druggist tells how knowing the secret medical problems of his women customers gradually unhinged him: "My mind was like the waiting room of a brothel." More often, though, passion is the least Elkin's people have to worry about. Ben Flesh, the hero of The Franchiser (1976), learns in Rapid City, S. Dak., that he has multiple sclerosis. He worries about this and the effect of a current heat wave on his local business: "The Mister Softees...