Word: anticlimax
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fence Menders. With that, a curious sense of anticlimax swept Japan. Returning wearily to his home in suburban Shibuya, Kishi found it free of the yelling, snake-dancing mobs that have besieged it every day since May 20. Taking advantage of the calm, workmen were busy repairing Kishi's smashed gates and fences...
When they are not, in Fiedler's view, "infuriatingly boyish," the masterworks of U.S. fiction, e.g., Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, are sexless. Even in The Scarlet Letter, the "A" might as well stand for anticlimax, for all passion is spent before the novel begins. Instead of depicting love and marriage, the U.S. writer customarily projects a spectral landscape dominated by death, pursuit and flight. The U.S. novel does not derive its power from skill, according to Fiedler, or from its vaunted realism (from Poe to Nathanael West, it is often surreal), but from something...