Word: wordplays
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KNOTS. One of the central ideas of the oracular psychoanalyst R.D. Laing is that people who are maddened by an irrational society drive each other mad. In his book Knots, a melange of gnomic wordplay, he gave a lively definition of what he meant. For example, he thinks that nearly everyone has come tumbling after an archetypal Jack and Jill caught in such tangles as "I'm upset that you're not upset that I'm upset that you're upset that I'm upset when...
There is much more to Kieu than escapist melodrama. Written by a renowned Vietnamese classicist named Nguyen Du (1766-1820), the poem in Vietnamese has a wide range of wordplay. The meter is a flowing iambic called luk-bat, full of rhyming and nearly as easy to memorize as a song. Much of this is unavoidably lost in the otherwise excellent English translation by Huynh Sanh Thong, a Vietnamese scholar who has lived in the U.S. all his adult life. Jaded Western readers who may find Kieu's plight unconvincing can still enjoy the poem for its language, especially...
...lilting wordplay, the vitality of its episodes, the accessibility of its meaning, sentiments and broad comedy, Donald Newlove's second novel can be quite demanding. After finishing the last page, the reader may feel bound to answer a difficult question: Would he pick up hitchhiking 30-year-old Siamese twins, drenched and not too sober, carrying a trumpet, a trombone, a suitcase, a bag containing laundry and a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven...
ALLEN's answers to the questions "Why do Some Women Have Trouble Reaching Orgasm?." "What Happens During Ejaculation?," and "Are The Findings of Doctors Who Do Sex Research Accurate?," all get their laughs from Allen's wordplay and pacing. It's hard to choose, but probably the best is his answer to "Are the Findings of Doctors Who Do Sex Research Accurate?" in which he casts himself as a budding young sexologist. After picking up a young and beautiful reporter, Helen, on his way to study under the famed but eccentric sexologist Dr. Bernardo, Allen arrives to find a crumbling...
Stoppard pushes this and related theses with antic wordplay, inspired zaniness and crackerjack wit. The evening would sag in spots if it were not for Hordern. What might have been simply a caricature of an absent-minded professor emerges as a warmly affectionate portrait of the last living humanist. And Rigg is lovely to look at, especially in the nude, and to listen to as she delivers her lines with a resolute intelligence that seems to unbend the pretzel twists of thought...