Word: blather
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that this is because the dirty passages in the Tropics or Sexus, Nexus and Plexus come at four-page intervals. This is shallow thinking. Actually the canny reader skips through Miller not so much to concentrate on naughtiness as to avoid what comes between. What does is ill-written blather on one of two subjects: 1) the downtrodden state of artists in the U.S. (and their uptrodden bliss in Europe), and 2) how the world's troubles would be solved if everyone would be nice to everyone else...
...wanderlust; but their exploits are infinitely more humorous than amorous. As for the dud shot, Ask Any Girl, well, it ought to be pretty good. Shirley MacLaine and David Niven are attractive and agreeable people, but the script of this CinemaScopic, Metrocolored drivel reduces the pair to mere boobish blather. Various shorts and a Sylvester cartoon are thrown in free...
TAKE A GIRL LIKE You, by Kingsley Amis (320 pp.; Harcourt, Brace; $3.95), recalls that before novelists ruined a good dodge by inventing realism, a writer could blather pleasantly for three volumes on nothing more substantial than "She shouldn't, but will she?" Now everyone assumes that she will, but should she? The question is of grave concern to young women, their parents, psychiatrists and friends, but it is not a very good theme for an entire novel. A snickering approach inevitably blasphemes against Freud, and a serious treatment defames Boccaccio. In this somewhat disappointing book, Kingsley (Lucky...
That Certain Something, by Arlene Francis (Messner; $3). Blather about how to be absolutely fascinating, including a chapter called "Charm Begins at Home-and Keeps on Going," another called "Twenty Short Cuts to Charm" (non-authors like to number their nonsense), and a questionnaire called a Charmometer, which asks such questions as "Do you plan one small thing each day to make your life more pleasant...
Once Upon a Dream, a Personal Chat with all Teenagers (Bobbs-Merrill; $2-95), by Patti Page. Blather on how to be absolutely fascinating, although young. Singer Page's chapter on early marriage begins, "Please, Dear Hearts and Gentle People, not yet-not till you think it over. Do you know the statistics on adolescent marriages?'' There is no advice on how old one should be before attempting a book...