Word: casual
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...average concert-goer is not concerned with these abstractions, but even a casual listener, if he is at all acquainted with Strawinsky's music, must notice in contemporary compositions the re-echoing not only of his spirit, but also of his treatment of the actual details of writing music. For example, the exciting sound of regular, freakily marked rhythmical beats varied by complex shifts of pulse and accent is a commonly heard effect which everyone associates immediately with the "Strawinsky influence...
...favorite phrase among Italian Fascisti is "changing of the guard." It refers to a supposedly fixed policy of rotating the Party's big men in the State's big jobs; actually it is usually used to make crucial political shifts seem casual and routine. Last week, when Italy's hierarchy was violently shaken up, the phrase was shouted loud on Rome's seven hills. But no amount of inspired pooh-poohing could make the changes unimportant...
...slow withering of gaiety, of wit, of external interest, a dark and deepening absorption in the study of Buddhism, of the Bible in Hebrew, of the nature of reality, and of death, which at length is no longer feared. The journal ends in the aftermath of a gentle and casual dream: "Perhaps we shall be talking just like that when we awake from this life. Who could say that all our waking life was not a dream...
...decision has been reached, for it has been obvious from the start that the Administration had the votes. Further debate could only serve to keep the pot boiling, and the minds of the people in confusion. It was an issue that must have disturbed those who gave it only casual attention. On first sight, both sides seemed to be right, and only those who gave the matter careful thought could satisfy themselves that repeal was the best course...
...novels, The Asiatics and The Seven Who Fled, Frederic Prokosch has shown a facile imagination and a brilliant hand at silken, vivid prose. Ostensibly a narrative of travel from Syria to China, The Asiatics told of hair-raising adventures, lubriciously glamorous encounters, incredible coincidences and cosmic conversations with the casual air of an article in the National Geographic. More Spenglerian than picaresque, The Seven Who Fled brought together to their mutual doom seven characters symbolic of European races, let them slowly disintegrate with their bewildered sensuality and inter minable talk into the vast oblivion of Asia...