Word: banalized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Banal and I were classmates. Our eyes had met, our bodies had met, and then someone introduced us . . . A stranger across the booth spoke. "Monique, what are you staring at, silly girl?" It was Banal. Curious that I hadn't recognized him. Suddenly I knew why. A revolting look of cheerfulness had twisted and distorted those clear young features until he seemed actually to be smiling...
...typical fifth-grade reader text today "introduces the child to no famous writers whatsoever except as (in the manual for teachers) it suggests supplementary library books." Thus, the modern educationists are actually cheating their pupils. "What makes any child want to read is not only information or a banal story about familiar things and types, but his awakening, if it ever comes, to the . . . freshness and originality of thought and expression, commanded by great masters of prose and poetry...
...back to his wife in quite the airy way in which she took him. But Luc has not fallen in love, and before novel's end, Dominique has to do the penance she has always detested-the waits by the telephone that doesn't ring, the anguished, banal begging ("I can't live without you") and the ever-present taste of ashes that even whisky will not wash away...
...sailors of the S.S. Lotus are unsatisfactory as comic characters, at least the situations are often funny. Many are stock: the predicted accident, the splattered face, the timid or revulsed male confronted with the fond, impetuous female. But even the most banal scenes (e.g. the predictable seasickness) are often delightful. Although one is always conscious that this is not illuminating comedy, it is entirely possible to enjoy it. Those ruled by a narrow prejudice against slapstick, however, must be warned...
...contrast with this intelligent treatment of the feebleminded is Robert Fisher's stale catalogue of bullfight lore. Fisher's use of a banal subject--the discovery of dedication, and death, in a bullfight--would be bad enough if the story were well-handled. But the author seems to have almost no control. Every possible detail and almost all the conceivable eventualities of a bullfight are crammed into the story, completely obscuring the character of the novillero who achieves his consummation in death. Besides this retailing of tauromachian local-color, Fisher afflicts his readers with a stiff, unrealistic dialogue (including some...