Word: pompousity
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...underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof." On reading this pompous remark by Alexander Calder, the most internationally celebrated of all living American sculptors, one's hopes rise. Make way for the cosmic perspective! In fact, as the Whitney Museum's new retrospective of the work of this venerable figure testifies, his achievement is more modest and realistic. In the 200-odd works that make up "Calder's Universe," as the show is called, there is little of the real universe, but a pervasive flavor...
...meaning but without Pascal's support. Elsewhere she undermines Celine's pretence that he resented public interviews and solicitation of his advice by jibing, "Somehow, he protested too much." When relating how Celine insisted that he did not believe in love, the Frenchman's latest biographer sounds a rather pompous echo: "One thinks that the gentleman doth protest too much...
William Larsen is acceptable as the paranoid and pompous Reverend Samuel Parris, who won't give an inch about anything: "I am not some preaching farmer with a book under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College." Actually, Miller's scholarship slipped here, for Parris did not hold a Harvard degree. The late historian Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote book after book on Harvard's first 300 years, stated that Parris may perhaps have attended the College for a time around 1672-74, but was not a graduate. Harvard was at times lax in its early attendance-keeping...
...latest is called Lovin' and Learnin' (MCA), and she may get plenty of the former, but she can use a lot more of the latter. This album suffers from trying to make her sound less country, which is as hopeless as trying to make Frank Church sound less pompous. The worst numbers (it's a tough choice) are "Ain't That a Shame", a pathetic attempt at a rock number, and "Makin' Love Don't Always Make Love Grow" (honest, folks). Tanya has a rich, explosive voice, but until she quits trying to be a female Elvis Presley (she said...
Carter is not a strict Evangelical. When he was Governor, he outraged some Southern Baptist clergymen by calling Georgia's ban on Sunday liquor sales hypocritical because many people patronized bootleggers on the Sabbath. One of his first acts was to end the pompous religious service that his predecessor as Governor, Lester Maddox, held in the state house every morning. Carter thought that the service was pointless...