Word: artlessness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...sits comfortably on the head of ex-Missionary Margaret Landon. Her virtues are the warmth of her religious faith and the frankness with which she discusses such delicate matters as jealousy and rivalry among missionaries. The general result is too honest and heartfelt to be scoffed at, but too artless to make a good novel...
There was not a new Truman. At 64, he was the same brisk, gregarious, stubborn, artless man, the fanatically loyal friend who flew from Washington to attend the funeral of Boss Tom Pendergast, the same engaging Missourian who tripped over his academic gown and blurted: "Whups! I forgot to pull up my dress." Home in Independence for Christmas last week, Harry Truman tramped through the familiar streets with careless informality, dropped in on his friends, doffed his hat to neighbors. Like any well-trained husband, he carefully knocked the snow off his boots before going into the house...
...deep thought to the Communists in his party. He was worried about Rexford Tugwell's threatened defection (TIME, Aug. 30). After four days of consultation with his advisers, he concocted a statement which he hoped would pacify Tugwell without offending his Communist supporters. It was a masterpiece of artless dodging...
...heroically destroyed when Gunpowder exploded. Bread Crumb, meanwhile, came to his appointed happy end. The hunter ate him. Platonov's moral: "Bread gave the hunter strength. Gunpowder wanted to singe the whole world but only burned a sparrow." In Baba-Yaga's Russia such a feeble, artless fable would have had a hard time finding a publisher. But in Soviet Russia its publication evoked a thunderstorm. Pravda blasted: "Reeks of cheap pacifism*. . . both false and harmful. 'Peace on earth, good will to men,' our planet has not yet arrived at this ideal. Of course, man needs...
...Laurel and Hardy, are the last of a unique school of slapstick comedians. Spawned in old-time vaudeville and burlesque, the brothers excel in the highly specialized arts of pantomime, pie throwing, and provocative leering at women, while our present generation of couriers relies chiefly on flip lines and artless mugging. Slapstick is passing out of existence, but not out of date. Until a new generation of wits rediscover the art, go down to the Laffmovie and rear at the last of the great comedy teams in action...