Word: monkey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...literal truth on the origin appeared in Genesis: after filling the seas with great whales and creeping things, God created, in his own image, man. Despite more than a century of scientific backing for Darwin's theory of evolution-despite the victory of Darwinism in the famous Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925-the argument was still going on last week in California...
Spike and Mary Lou sidled closer. "Workin' in the fillin' station.... too many tasks... check the tires... check the oil... wash the windows... Dollar gas... too much monkey business... too much monkey business." It was time for bump and grind. Bump at the elbow. Bump and grind at the hip. The band speeded up. The crowd licked their lips, joined the action, sipped more beer. It was Mary Lou and Spike all alone, center stage. Bump, Bump, Bump. And grind. "Too much monkey business...
...interlaced with odd bits of equestrian esoterica, like the tale of the dancing horses of Sybaris who betrayed the Sybarites in battle in 510 B.C. by throwing their riders at the sound of the enemy's flutes. Here one can trace bloodlines, learn how jockeys developed their "monkey-on-a-stick" riding style, or simply be amused by the 30,000 deaths following one race, and other bits of charming skullduggery. Copiously illustrated with the art of masters, the book reveals everything but tomorrow's winners...
...self-deprecatory tone and its appraisal of the transitory nature of fame and the impermanence of doctrinal certainty. "I have self-confidence," Mao writes at one point, "but at times I lack it. Often I feel that just as when there is no tiger in the mountains the monkey reigns as king, in this way too I have become the big king. But this is not making compromises, because my dominant nature is that of the tiger, while my subordinate one is the monkey...
Signs of a cautious return to wider literary interests than poetry praising Mao or socially conscious tractor drivers did appear last year with the republication of Western classics like Thucydides and such traditional Chinese novels as The Dream of the Red Chamber and Monkey. But contemporary Chinese fiction is still appallingly banal by Western standards. At the Hsin Hua bookstore in Peking's main shopping district, I asked a salesgirl to tell me which of the recently published Chinese novels was reckoned the best. "Take your pick over there," she answered unselfconsciously. "They're all the same...