Word: awkward
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...downs since the days of his idolatrous early biographer, Parson Weems. The debunking period set in long ago-at least as early as 1880, when a character in Henry Adams' novel, Democracy, ticked him off as "a rawboned country farmer, very hard-featured, very awkward, very illiterate and very dull." Since then, two generations of "liberal" debunkers have gleefully whittled away at his reputation, trying to leave the impression that Washington was little more than a stodgy figurehead...
Author Griffin's hero is a cardboard character in a contest of more powerful wills; the monks and most of the townspeople are mere symbols of good & evil. Nevertheless-and crude, awkward and febrile as it is-The Devil Rides Outside is kept bowling along by pure writing steam. It is often repetitive and frequently staggers to a stop, but it is saved each time by a fresh burst of vigor and intensity. At novel's end the musicologist returns to the monastery, and there is the promise that he will find God and inner peace. Author Griffin...
...early in September, two members of the Young Republican Club walked into a Boston office building and collided head on with a member of the Liberal Union. After an awkward exchange of pleasantries, the political rivalries discovered they were both in the building to call for Registration literature at their printers. The Republicans' printer was on the fifth floor, the HLU's on the sixth. Both parties picked up their bundles and walked away, muttering about "a small world...
...next fight if not in this one. And the resounding title, "heavyweight champion of the world," suits Rocky Marciano (43 straight wins, 38 of them by knockouts) better than it suited old (4O-plus), often beaten (15 recorded times before last week) Jersey Joe Walcott. Marciano is too awkward and too much a fighter of one talent ever to be a Louis, but the crown fits him better than passably, and it will take a good fighter to get it away from him. Probably none of the challengers now in prospect-Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Rex Layne, Roland La Starza, Clarence...
...Munich one morning last week, a little boy named Hans Koegel appeared at the doorway of the Schule in der Blu-menstrasse and nervously entered. Like other children arriving for the first day of school, he clung tightly to his mother, and it was not for several awkward moments that he finally relaxed enough to smile tentatively at his classmates. But even after he did so, his mother and teacher continued to watch him closely...