Word: absurdity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...present now; yet few will make any changes to minimize the importance of athletics. The "Times", in an editorial yesterday: "If all college students were 'gentlemen' we should need no rules at all."--a statement true but also common knowledge. And one reason is that colleges are for some absurd reason judged by athletic teams; so that men who are not gentlemen in the best sense go to college to achieve athletic reputations and perhaps a degree; so that alumni may back such men financially...
...extra-curriculum affairs, such a plan seems dangerous in many ways. There are activities which no scale of points can take into consideration, dances, or the positions necessary for those working their way through, either of which may end disastrously for the careless, although to curb either would be absurd. The amount a man undertakes in college is dependent wholly upon himself. No one else is competent to judge his capacity; and while his own estimate may be wrong the experience gained by success or failure is of considerable value...
...defend Homer, however, is as absurd today as it would be for modern theologians to argue on the number of angels who can dance on the point of a needle. It is no longer a matter of defense or attack, it is a matter of choice. There are always some who are interested enough to prefer Horace to bridge or Sophocles to A. H. Woods, to whom Athens is as real as Broadway. Literature is safe in their hands. Meanwhile the rest of us rush on regardless of the delights they offer us, to look for happiness in State Street...
...Matter" is the title of the last chapter; the reader is tempted to apply the phrase to the book. If life is utterly without meaning, if all action is absurd, why bother to talk about it? The answer is that the author does not necessarily believe this himself. He leaves us to assume that, although he has found no clue to life, he allows us, and occasionally himself to hope that there may nevertheless be some answer to the riddle...
...whole is the subordination of narrative. Until a short time ago, all college papers used to serve a regular repast of warmed over O. Henry, composed, at first largely, and at last entirely, of the condiment of Surprise. It is pleasant to remark that the influence of this absurd literary mountebank has finally waned, if not vanished. The two stories in the present Advocate, which I take as typical, are transitional; the old short-story formula is gone; the new is still in the making. Both pieces of work suffer from this lack of a guiding convention; the fancy...