Word: tragedian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Tuchman's view of history is gravely classical. She is a tragedian who mounts the past against the fixed backdrop of human nature. Reason and goodwill exist but are like the stars in the heavens: flashes of enlightenment separated by vast expanses of darkness. "Halfway 'between truth and endless error,' " she concludes, "the mold of the species is permanent...
Comedy is the original no-respect art form. Primitive man knew that if he were to be hit over the head by his fiercest rival, then stumble around and yell "Aarrggh!," he would be acclaimed as a great tragedian. But if he were to do ten minutes of witty stand-up, then bash himself with a club, he would be accused of doing shtick. It is ever thus. At the movies, comedy may be king at the wickets, and most of Hollywood's nouveau novas -- Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Pee-wee Herman...
Carol Burnett's childhood might have produced a tragedian instead of a comedian. In this autobiography disguised as a letter to her three daughters, she runs through a series of blackout sketches that are by turns sad, hilarious and grotesque. Burnett grew up in a shabby Hollywood apartment with her beloved maternal grandmother. Nanny used to tie a rolled Christian Science Monitor around her waist so her "insides wouldn't fall out." She took Carol to the movies; then, "when it was time to go home, we'd go to the bathroom, and she'd empty all the toilet paper...
...even in disappointed love, Shaw could never quite play the tragedian; the best he could manage was Pagliacci. These are the years of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the original Liza. Shaw was lured to her drawing room, Laurence notes, "at which time, by Mrs. Campbell's subtle contrivance, her bosom and his fingertips came into fleeting contact." Shaw is instantly smitten; he confesses to a friend, "I am on the verge of 56. There has never been anything so ridiculous, or so delightful, in the history of the world...
Tyrone is a failed actor with a tragedian's soul and a Broadway tinhorn's compulsion for self-abasement in bad booze and worse sex. Josie, the daughter of his Connecticut tenant farmer, has adopted the manner of a slut in order to hide her Madonna's heart. Their tragedy is that their one night of (sexless) love comes too late. From it they achieve not redemption but a brief, bittersweet memory; not" I enough, one suspects, to light their separate darkening paths into the future...