Bloom's robust sense of the absurd helps readers relax in what for some might be uncomfortable moments: a graphic description of the mechanics of sex surgery, for example.
For one thing, no one knows whether exposure to the absurd can help people with explicit learning, like memorizing French.
Douglas Fairbanks — after Charlie Chaplin the most popular male star in silent cinema — had a sense of the absurd that helped him triumph over the claptrap.
Frail but steely, she mocked them: an eye for the absurd, she said, helped to keep her mental distance from those "brutal, cold, murderous, contemptuous people".
That was before the players' strike that led to the cancellation of the World Series; before the steroids era began in earnest; and before juiced-up sluggers with cartoonish bodies took home run hitting to absurd levels and helped baseball reach financial peaks, however Faustian the bargain.
In the second and third parts, the tone lurches unpleasantly between the salacious and the psychotic as Bruno goes to a New Age resort where absurd self-help courses ("Success Through Dance," "Tantric Accounting") are the order of the day.
Yet, lending a helping hand to Pornopolis is far from the most absurd approach being discussed to stimulate the economy.
The decline in retail sales in March of 0.5 per cent caused an immediate drop in the pound and certainly did not help the absurd Tory claims of competence.
Fruitfly researchers consider it a matter of pride to give genes colorful names, but these are often moderated or disguised by medical researchers who feel absurd names will not help attract research funds.
So, though Fjordland has defended its nutritional standards and dismissed Breivik's comments as absurd, one can't help suspecting that, over this, as with cold coffee, the mass-murdering fascist may have a point.
