improbably, brusque, amorphous, disaggregated. Our correspondent spent three days with one rebel group which is considering what happens if, improbable as it may seem, they win

The best paintings in the extraordinary Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exude a commanding discombobulation, Roberta Smith writes. They challenge and seduce with their brusqueness of surface, inconsistencies of space or scale, emotional ambiguities and alternately frank and improbable accounts of the female form. Courbet himself was, and remains, a grandly amorphous personality whom even his most loyal supporters often deemed an opportunistic chameleon. He willfully smashed the tidy boundaries separating established painting genres to record life as he saw it.

Photo: Musee Fabre, Montpellier

Scott establishes Napoleon’s early rise to power with bold imagery and brusque narrative economy, vividly setting the historical moment with scenes from both inside the corridors of revolutionary power — enter Robespierre — and the surging anarchy out in the streets. 

Ross Douthat

The End of Roe Is Just the Beginning

An improbable anti-abortion triumph yields an uncertain political future.

The results today can be seen in the “remarkable” correspondences between Google’s California headquarters, Googleplex, and the Saddleback Church of the Rev. Rick Warren (a friend of the late management guru Peter Drucker):

Rigid building models were broken down into amorphous, disaggregated masses, screened from their parking lots by trees and artificial hills; both campuses include plush lounges, landscaped paths, beach-volleyball courts, and cafés (with “outdoor seating for sunshine daydreaming,” Google’s Web site boasts). The architecture is meant to persuade church members or secular employees — especially younger people — to spend their most productive time there.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done the improbable: translated the topic of campaign finance into a viral video.

OK

The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word

 

 

'Lonelyhearts'

By MARION MEADE
Reviewed by DOROTHY GALLAGHER

In Hollywood in 1940, Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney improbably married. Then came the car crash.

Our correspondent spent three days with one rebel group which is considering what happens if, improbable as it may seem, they win

im·prob·a·ble (ĭm-prŏb'ə-bəl)

adj.
Unlikely to take place or be true.

improbableness im·prob'a·ble·ness n.
improbably im·prob'a·bly adv.

[形]〈物・事が〉起こりそう［ありそう］にもない, ほんとうらしくない
an improbable event
起こりそうにもない事件 an improbable name
風変わりな名前 It is highly improbable that she will marry him.
彼女が彼と結婚するなんてとうていあり得ない. im・prob・a・ble・ness [名]
im・prob・a・bly [副]

brusque
also brusk adj.
Abrupt and curt in manner or speech; discourteously blunt. See synonyms at gruff.

[French, lively, fierce, from Italian brusco, coarse, rough, from Late Latin brūscum, perhaps blend of Latin rūscus, butcher's broom, and Late Latin brūcus, heather; see briar¹.]

brusquely brusque'ly adv.
brusqueness brusque'ness n.


amorphous
adj.

1. Lacking definite form; shapeless. See synonyms at shapeless.
2. Of no particular type; anomalous.
3. Lacking organization; formless.
4. Lacking distinct crystalline structure.

[From Greek amorphos : a-, without; see a–¹ + morphē, shape.]