Wordwizard

The Price of Salt (later reissued as Carol) – the lesbian love story Highsmith published under the pen name Claire Morgan in 1952 – is curiously absent of these pessimisms. There are no violent crimes, no sociopathic protagonists.

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... SApp_Other

Is the first sentence grammatical and meaningful?
Does it mean what it is supposed to mean?

I think we need 'devoid' instead of 'absent'. Has 'absent' been used correctly here?

Gratefully,
Navi

It's not a very common formulation -- probably because it sounds rather stilted nowadays -- but it is a Standard English expression. Other examples:

His mind was absent of conscious thoughts.

At this time of year, the park was absent of flowers.

As you suggest, "devoid of" is a valid alternative in your specimen sentence. So is "without".

I'm not entirely sure that I would call it "standard", but you certainly hear it and see it. A quick look at Google Ngram suggests that it quite suddenly became more popular in the 2000s. I can find very few examples of the usage prior to the 1990s.

For myself, I would not use it.