Word: seer
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...movie ends with a virtual sacrifice. Solitaire, ex-virgin and seer, is to be sacrificed for betraying Mr. Big. There is much preparation, much ritual: fires, effigies, wild-eyed primitives, coffins full of lethal snakes (phony) and about 1500 natives who move in sequence looking possessed. This scene is so good it is repeated, first as a precredit vignette, and once with Solitaire as the finale. Solitaire is dressed in virginal white, and is led, amidst much kicking and screaming to the place of sacrifice, where she is confronted with a poisonous snake; it will presumably bite her somewhere around...
...print journalists' and historians' task to review and criticize that final act - and the play that preceded it. It is television's job to provide the stage. It has done that job admirably. As of now, the country can only be grateful, and the wisest political seer can do no more than mouth five magic words, the sage advice of TV announcers immemorial: Tune in tomorrow...
...Harvard's prestige extends into more crucial matters. Professors here are accorded "seer" status, even when they turn out to be wrong. The slick newsweeklies typically chart a trend among young people by teeing off with the latest goings-on at Harvard. The Hotelworkers Union pension fund and the Jay Gould Foundation may have similar stocks tucked away in their protfolios, but if Harvard makes an investment, it is considered automatically sound...
...type he describes passingly well in another story, "Chagrin D'Amour." The poor writer is inspired by a dream, but cannot satisfactorily write it out as he thinks a 'true poet' would. Instead he resolves "that he must content himself with being a true poet, a dreamer, a seer, only in his soul, and that his handiwork must retain that of a simple man of letters." The quotation is revealing, especially given the strongly autobiographical nature of Hesse's later stories. Whether Hesse recognized that he was no 'true poet,' or not, it is a fact that the problems...
Perhaps some perspective will help. John Gardner's two previous novels set out on much the same course as The Sunlight Dialogues: In The Wreckage of Agathon, an old, muddled Athenian seer is imprisoned in Sparta for aiding the Helot rebellion. Using this one dominating character, set apart from the world, Gardner waxes and wanes between the philosophical and the lewd, providing an overview that is at once serious and hilarious. Again, in Grendel, the monster's ability to stand back and look at man from a unique perspective makes the novel both exciting and valuable reading. This remains true...