Word: bland
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...little envious of the then famous and incredibly fecund playwright, Lope de Vega). But in Quixote, Cervantes knew that he had written a bestseller. He predicted, in jest, a sale of 30,000,000 copies (just about it). Biographer Bell, with other critics, observes that this bland and spacious masterpiece is less simple than it seems. More than a satire on medieval romances, which were the soap operas of Cervantes' age, it leads even the earthy Sancho Panza into a subtly dizzying identification of reality and dream...
...Springs was proud of Sid McMath, home-town boy, ex-Marine officer, winner of the Silver Star, courageous politician. As prosecuting attorney, he had broken the 20-year rule of Mayor Leo Patrick McLaughlin, whose bland refusal to enforce the law had made Hot Springs a sanctuary for every gambler, gangster and fast-dollar man in the country. As soon as he took office on the first of the year, the new prosecutor closed Hot Springs' gambling spots and got McLaughlin himself indicted for corruption in office. McLaughlin did not even try to run for reelection. Dopesters rated Sidney...
...Bland, well-dressed Mazumbo, leader of 2,000 politically conscious Negro workers, had taken his new name in protest against discrimination by a Bermuda newspaper; it prefixed "Mr." to the names of white members of Bermuda's Parliament (second oldest in the world), but called him simply Gordon. At his Hamilton home, Mazumbo lolled beside the Mimeograph machine in the living room, thinking up ways to needle Bermuda's whites who opposed his drive for better wages for Bermuda's Negroes...
...true that the hard core of Wallace's listeners consisted largely of the vociferous intellectual and professional Left. But around it were clustered thousands of ordinary, bewildered citizens. Some of them sought to hear in Wallace's alternately flat and strident voice the bland tones of Franklin Roosevelt, to recover, in Wallace's fumbling gestures, the touch of a vanished hand. Most of them were vaguely troubled about such timely problems as the Bomb, World War III, Russia, economic collapse. All were groping for answers and willing to listen to anybody who could offer one and Henry...
...seems natural, Dickens' weird characters are lighted up with contemporary understanding: Pip's furiously cruel sister, for instance, becomes entirely plausible as a rampant neurotic. But the good old larger-than-life characters-Jaggers, Miss Havisham, and the glittering, cruel Estella-are presented with such a grandly bland air that they become believable, and unforgettable, by the force of their own peculiarity. The whole movie is a triumphant example of what can be achieved in film by tact, taste, and keen literary intelligence...