Word: banal
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...Nebraska author whom I've ignored until this age," she says. "But in [Cather's] Song of the Lark, there's a character who says she will never be the artist she was as a child. I have very much that same feeling: that the ability to take something banal or simple and make it into something else is a skill that is in the realm of childhood...
...controversial stand seems to be supporting the idea of “diversity” in higher education by defending affirmative action. His idea of originality and moral seriousness seems to be quoting literary voices, drawing upon authors whose ability to communicate dwarfs his own, and using them to banal and platitudinous ends...
...based on individual constitutions—but fortunately, the symptoms are easily recognizable to the trained (i.e., Harvard-educated) eye. For one thing, the Harvard Syndrome causes otherwise sincere people to lie, with almost pathological zeal, about their motives for not attending Harvard. The lies can range from the banal (“lousy undergrad education,” as my Legal Seafood chum insisted) to the breathtaking and patently unbelievable (“I really liked Yale better”). But however involved and intricate—or charmingly clumsy—the lie may be, the truth...
...explained why lame, largely tuneless indie-rock that lacks anything resembling a halfway decent voice, riff or attitude should be allowed to exist beyond a debut album. The mystery is thickened when an elite set of rock critics lionize the banal incomprehensibility as if it held the secret of life, the universe and everything that only the enlightened, fortunate few can understand. Elf Power will gratify those who believe that only mindless plebs think that music is made for listening and enjoyment...
...Girl Who Makes Good”) may underscore some of the potential problems with Riding in Cars in its newest incarnation. Often the striking and memorable features of a biography or autobiography are inexorably tied to the words themselves. A well-written passage can provide even the most seemingly banal details of an ostensibly unremarkable life with a unique glow. Of course, all of the advantages of the written medium are lost when a book is converted into a film. To be sure, the motion picture medium can do many things that a book cannot. The reader?...