Word: abracadabra
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...divinity can only address humanity in opaque hints and fragmentary revelations, since a mortal mind is no more capable of comprehending the divine plan than an infant is of understanding Shakespeare. Lewis advances this argument less through his stiff allegorical characters than through nimble theological dialectics, plus such gaudy abracadabra as temple harlots and garish bird masks that Ungit's priests don during blood sacrifices. But if the proper use of reason is to know where reason ends, Lewis' myth-making serves its purpose well, for the book carries the mind to the craggy limits of rationality where...
...LONG NIGHT, by Martin Caldin (242 pp.; Dodd, Mead; $3), drops a fictional atom bomb on a U.S. industrial town and morbidly watches the gory disaster work itself out. World War III comes to Harrington, U.S.A. with a touch of abracadabra-jabber at the air defense control towers: "Three. Multimotor. Low. One minute. Alpha Quebec Two Four Green . . ." This means enemy bombers. Author Caidin, a science writer, observes the beginning of the cataclysm through the little eyes of Henry Thompson, a jelly-spined civil defense map plotter who is quivering in his movie seat when the warning sirens sound...
...civilization we are dedicated to defend. It was conversation of which the New Testament, the greatest teaching ever recorded, was composed . . . Great books, scientific discoveries, works of art, great perceptions of truth and beauty in any form, all require great conversation to complete their meaning; without it they are abracadabra-color to the blind or music to the deaf. Conversation is the handmaid of learning, true religion and free government." His reflections had prodded Dr. Griswold, one of whose hobbies has long been a scrutiny of the academic scene, into a reappraisal of what higher education is all about. Ventured...