Word: reek
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Reason frequently attempts to shock the reader with pointless vulgarity (". . .a faint, sour reek of vomit came from her delicate mouth. Mathieu inhaled it ecstatically"). Existentialists may deny that such scenes are introduced for sensationalism's sake, but they have not explained why it is necessary to expound their doctrine solely from a worm's eye view of life. What one of the characters calls "the freemasonry of the urinal" will seem, to many readers, an accurate description of Sartre's own books...
...people like to read stories and books that reek with sin, that shame the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, that shock and insult high heaven? It is because millions in America are honeycombed with impurity, vice, adultery and moral rot. When they read popular books and magazines that sanction this . . . they feel less guilty about their own sins...
...stench of Buchenwald would reek in history. But how much of it was known to German civilians even in nearby Weimar? Sick with disgust, tough General George S. Patton ordered the burghers of the town to be taken through Buchenwald and shown its obscenities. Twelve hundred men & women of Weimar walked unwillingly through the camp and wept, retched, fainted. A young Hitler Madchen sobbed: "How awful...
...very dark and the air was choking with the reek of cordite and grit and the fine dry dust of rotten old woodwork. My eyes and nose were full of dirt. I was shivering from panic and excitement, but at the same time experiencing an extraordinary sensation of being completely all right and unhurt, no matter what horrible thing had happened...
...long, elastic curves, like carelessly hung nets [the lianas catch] falling leaves, branches, and fruits, [hold] them for years until they sag and burst like rotten bags, scattering blind reptiles, rusty salamanders, hairy spiders . . . the comejen grub gnaws at the trees like quick-spreading syphilis . . .; everywhere is the reek of fermentation, steaming shadows, the sopor of death, the enervating process of procreation...