Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Oscar Wilde, in adversity, might call shallowness "the supreme vice"; but shallow-ness-a wonderfully rewarding shallow-ness-is what went deepest in him. And much more than when sincerely contrite, he is tragic in the superb gallantry of such humor as when, standing handcuffed in the pouring rain, he murmured: "If this is how Her Majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any." By omitting such touches and emphasizing Wilde's plangent side, and by himself-if often eloquent-being often florid, Mac Liammoir piles Pelion upon Oscar, and turns what he dubs...
...tale of the masterful, but neurotic bootlegger manipulating a medicore, but good sheriff into a tragic trap. The Noblest Roman is somewhat ineffectual. But, as satire on the South, on county politics and preachings, and on the art of bootlegging, David Halberstam's first novel is pretty damned witty...
...much the same reason, McCalla's suicide is only mildly tragic. In a long paragraph at the end, and once or twice during the proceedings, Halberstam indicates that the new sheriff was caught between duty to his supporters (father, preacher, frigid and nagging wife) on the one hand, and, on the other, a desire to say the hell with it all (frigid and nagging wife). Although he flatly and ethically rejects Angelo's offer of five thousand dollars a year, in return for a certain averting of the eyes, he goes for Claudia, the prostitute, like an alcoholic...
People enjoy tragedy because they are culprits, Eric Bentley contended last . They identify the guilt of a tragic hero with their own. "In tragedy we the most single-minded and complete identification with guilt of any art soever...
...world is a rack on which mankind is tortured. A character in one of the plays is asked to recite what is called the short catechism-"it'll get worse, it'll get worse, it'll get worse." Starting thus, Brecht might have developed a tragic sense, but he apparently balked at three basic elements of tragedy-the idea of inevitability, human guilt, and the tragic hero. In Brecht's plays, G.O.D. is indeed just a word, and Fate becomes the blind workings of social chance. Men act inhumanly toward each other but are themselves victims...