Word: pompously
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hero and heroine have a way of both exalting and destroying everything and everyone around them, including each other. And behind their individual fates lies another, equally ambiguous story, which may be either the arrival of civilization in a barbarous land or the destruction of an Edenic world by pompous, ignorant invaders. Like the best fiction, Oscar and Lucinda does not require a choice between its alternative visions. It offers instead an enchanting contradiction, a mirror and a glass, a joyous reflection of how much and how little mere mortals are ever allowed...
Todd's life is a walk through the 20th century, and Boyd makes a lavish, if somewhat raveled, tour leader. Todd's mother, like Rousseau's, dies giving birth to him, and he grows up with his dour physician father and his pompous elder brother, not knowing much of love except for the erratic attentions of Oonagh, the daily. An indifferent student, he is eventually shipped off to a boarding school that he actually enjoys, in part because he never takes rugby seriously and in part because he is able to develop his talent for photography...
...achievement of Penelope Lively in her seventh novel, the surprise winner of the prestigious Booker Prize in England for 1987, is that she manages to evoke considerable sympathy for a character who could easily be a pompous bore. Lively sees her whole: an innocent in a shriveling world, determined to live on a heroic scale and frustrated by family and friends who fail her as companion demigods...
...group that really did transcend the script was the chorus of pompous Peers. In a swirl of top hats and colorful capes, they strut and sniff hilariously, snubbing the audience with a chorus of "bow, bow, thou lower middle classes, tradesmen, masses...
...time Paris' premier chef -- does not startle once she begins preparations for her triumph. But there are wonderful surprises in store. Follow the intricate ways in which her benefactors' pasts provide Babette with an occasion. Scan the crowd, at once skeptical yet starving for a masterpiece. Listen for that pompous critical voice leading the group from dubiety to joyous surrender. "Righteousness and bliss" is how that voice summarizes their experience...