Word: comfortless
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Each age fashions its text of Shakespeare in its own image. The sentimental, humanitarian men of the eighteenth century rewrote King Lear's agonizing, comfortless conclusion; the early Victorians cut out the bawdy and the morally subversive. The turn-of-the-century aesthetes were more sophisticated--they convinced themselves that words, speeches, scenes, and even whole plays were so bad that they could not have been written by Shakespeare. This was more dangerous than any of Samuel Johnson's incredibly insensitive moral judgments, because it made textual criticism the servant of literary taste instead of a neutral point of departure...
Except there are moments when the spirit palls and the resolute good humor stretches thin. Drunk once more, you stumble home alone to wrest yourself to sleep in an unmade, comfortless bed. And the party's almost over and whadaya got to show? The one-liners have long since faded. And after one or two bravura letters, the friendships fade as well. So what then's left to do short of shuffling through Senior Yearbook for the next 2000 years? Let's face it. College is pretty much a shuck. A holding action with a seductive glow that hasn...