All 3 Uses of
grotesque
in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- He's unable to comprehend things when they appear in the ugly, chopped-up, grotesque sentence style common to engineering and technical writing.†
Part 2 *
- Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance.†
Part 4
- He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick.†
Part 4
Definitions:
-
(1)
(grotesque) distorted and unnatural in shape or size -- especially in a disturbing way
or:
ugly, gross, or very wrong -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely, grotesque can refer to a style of art or instances of it that combines or distorts in a fanciful way natural forms into something that is often ugly or disturbing. Grotesque can also be used specifically to reference a gargoyle-like sculpture without a waterspout.