Word: blanded
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...artistry or conviction. If he can tell a story--and Caldwell can--he's entertaining. "I wouldn't try to tell anyone how to become a writer or try to influence anyone's style, but I hope that my example is occasionally an inspiration." Caldwell's approach is disarmingly bland and frank. He's not an old lecher, and he's probably a lot softer than he was in the Depression years, but he still really doesn't know "anything about advertising or promotion." And it's all rather admirable...
...answers to these and sundry other questions are offered in a fictional session of bland man's buff by Sloan Wilson, the man who did more for gray flannel suits than Brooks Brothers. The novel's key setting is Pine Island, Me., a summer retreat and a kind of "perverted Garden of Eden from which one was expelled for the sin of poverty." Among the unexpelled nouveau poor are the Hunters, who eke out their stay as genteel innkeepers. Fortyish Bart Hunter is an existentially minded drunkard whose most cutting insult is to call someone "cheerful." His disillusioned...
...best thing about it all is the character of the professor, who puddles around quoting Zeno and being abstract, and turns out to be perceptive even about one or two of the details of everyday existence. Sex, for instance. His bland assertion of delightfully simple and complex statements is masterful...
Windshield Wipers? The bland attitude gave priceless mileage to the Administration's Democratic critics. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, already planning a full-scale investigation of the Administration's missile policy, said bitterly in an Austin, Texas speech: "The Roman Empire controlled the world because it could build roads. Later−when men moved to the sea−the British Empire was dominant because it had ships. In the air age, we were powerful because we had airplanes. Now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. It is not very reassuring to be told that next...
...Nixon-Dulles statements did not and could not overcome the general impression that the Administration was taking a bland view of Sputnik. Since the Soviet satellite first swirled skyward, there had been a continuous whirl of top-policy meetings behind closed Washington doors. ("A conference is not a place," said a Washington wag. "It is a technique for hiding.") The only apparent results came with the announcements that 1) Defense Department research and development funds would have to be cut by 10% because of an order issued last August by retiring Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, and that 2) new Defense...