Word: phlegm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...presence as well as his art was the double take. In the midst of a movement, surrealism, which specialized in attention-getting stunts, political embroilments, sexual scandals and fervid half-religious crises, Magritte-next to Max Ernst and Salvador Dali, the best surrealist painter -seemed to be all phlegm and stolidity. He lived in respectable Brussels; he stayed married to the same woman, Georgette Berger, for the rest of his life; by the standards of the Paris art world in the '30s, he might as well have been a grocer. Yet Magritte possessed one of the most remarkable imaginations...
...difficult and sometimes, in its defiance of syntax and even grammar, infuriating. In 1955 Punch effectively parodied the Bowen manner: "She lit the sodden stub of last night's fag and took a sip of gin and meth to cut, as she'd have put it, the phlegm." Bowen knew that her style was odd and that it limited her popular appeal. But her manner of writing faithfully reflected the intense but indirect way she looked at the world. She approvingly described one of her novels as being "on the periphery of a passion-or. the intensified reflections...
...part of the Peabody proceeds to pay off Kennecott's $360 million debt and have a cool half-billion left over for lagniappe. But even though Wall Street is buzzing with rumors of possible takeover attempts, Kennecott's management and board affect an air of blue-blood phlegm...
...eminence I beheld. But soft! A look of confusion began to cross her scrambled features. Henry Jekyll once more! A little breathy murmur crossed her confused lips. "What say?" I called out, yearning to catch her drift. "Don't use that dumb hippie expression with me!" she roared, the phlegm rumbling in her throat. "I forgot what to do next! I forgot the next move!" She began lumbering around the room knocking over bookcases and smashing her rare collection of African fertility statuettes which bore an eerie resemblance to the little baseball players with bobbing round heads you can pick...
...more enlightening--and more believable--sections of The Great War is one describing how the war changed or added to language and its usage. He shows how it strengthened British stoicism in literary style, something Fussell calls "Phlegm," as in this letter home: "Move to trenches Hebuterne. Strafing and a certain dampness." He also presents us with the origins of the widespread use of form letters. British soldiers who tired of writing banal letters home--the only kind that could get by the censors--could write out a "Form A. 2042," also known as the "Whizz Bang" or "Quick Firer...