Word: comically
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...narrative epic, part rock opera, part home movie, United States is a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, aphoristic examination of 20th century life in 78 segments, lasting six hours and taking two evenings to perform. Wagnerian in its scope, Carrollian in its absurdist wit, Carsonian in its deadpan, stand-up-comic timing, Anderson's work is the biggest, most ambitious and most successful example to date of the avant-garde hybrid known as performance...
...released in October, and he is now working on Unfaithfully Yours, a remake of the Preston Sturges comedy, in which he portrays a famous conductor, convinced that his beautiful young wife (Nastassia Kinski) is having an affair behind his back. Five years ago, Moore was a well-known British comic who had a small American public; today he is one of Hollywood's top box-office draws, cuddling to his own bosom a salary of $2½ million for his latest picture...
While artfully setting up such comic relief and the mysteries to follow, Symons provides panoramic background. The question of Irish Home Rule charges the atmosphere. Prime Minister William Gladstone tries vainly to keep Parliament in session until it wears down and disposes of the Irish problem. Meanwhile, militant Irish congregate in London to plot bombings and other extralegal redresses. A delegation of three calls on Ross; people in his circle begin wondering where the young M.P.'s loyalties lie. Symons also conducts a guided tour of London's fin de siècle bohemia, where the names conjured...
...fiction, Jorge Luis Borges praised "one of the finest writers of our time," possessed with "fortunate invention . . . visual imagination and rhetorical virtues." Lionel Trilling maintained that Chesterton was "a far greater critic than his present reputation might suggest." And W.H. Auden could not think of "a single comic poem that is not a triumphant success...
...guests' everyday suffering, instead of their ability to sublimate it into performance, Cottle sometimes misses what makes them special. Still, there are times when they surmount his failures. Milton Berle was a study in self-pity while describing the anguish of fathering an illegitimate son, but displayed his comic mastery when he narrated a story of his attempted suicide. Perched at the window, Berle was about to leap. He was discovered by his secretary, who begged him not to jump and said, "Let's order some turkey." Berle looked away, inconsolable, then slowly turned his head and asked...