Word: wordplay
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...barely visible lettering on the wall, part of a cafe sign reminding patrons of the law against public drunkenness. But between the elements of the painting there is a continuous jostling, circling and reflection, a sense of the vitality of form in every particular, that puts metaphoric reflection and wordplay back in second place. It is the form, and the subtlety of its myriad relationships in spaces you feel you can touch, that counts. And there are enough paintings at this level in the Guggenheim's show to convey a sense of Braque's achievement, even though its full scope...
Stoppard, whose plays at minimum offer glorious wordplay and the shimmering surface of what seems to be Big Ideas, is at his funniest and saddest in Hapgood. This one is about physics, espionage, thriller novels, superpower paranoia, Star Wars technology, defectors, conflicts between work and homelife, and the possibilities for flimflammery in employing three sets of twins. The author's ardent anti-Communism seems to have evolved into a world- weariness reminiscent of John le Carre, in which the two camps of the cold war are morally equivalent players of a pointless, deadly game...
ACTING is falsehood. Or so it is in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, in which a love-entangled quarter of theater people, so used to faking emotions on stage, cannot feel emotions off stage. They resort to biting wordplay that is done to the hilt in the polished but ultimately sterile Winthrop production...
GHOULS R US reads the legend on Daffy's office window. He's just the spook sleuth to help a comely se-duck-tress who needs some exorcise. There are homages aplenty to the old cartoons -- lascivious bulging eyes, deft wordplay (in pig Latin) and that bizarre sound effect that suggests a gargoyle gargling -- and laughs aseveral. The pace lags in spots, but any lulls allow the viewer to savor the glory of full, hand-drawn animation. And Daffy is as raffish as ever, talking like Freud or stalking like Groucho. At the end, three ghostly Shmoos chase Daffy down...
Some skepticism may be permissible. The Gallic taste for abstractions and literary fun and games is not universally shared. And wordplay, no matter how winsome, does not travel well from one language to another. In any case, English-speaking readers can now examine Perec's most acclaimed book for themselves. At first glance, Life: A User's Manual looks every bit as good as the French have been saying it is for years...