Word: cleverness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...this sort of profundity that led critics to label him "superficial" at the age of sixty. But what Maugham lacks in depth he often makes up for in speed. His talents as playwright often outshone his skill with fiction for the very reason that the man could make a clever little plot move along rapidly...
...mock) a character on stage. There were other Britten trademarks: well-fitting songs and exciting ensembles. Even so, some found Albert's humor, at least in Tanglewood's production, so mordant that it often verged on the grim, and Britten's somewhat patchy score so consciously clever that at times it was irritating. The applause was warm, but not extravagant...
...readers are always delighted when they find a writer who really acts and talks like one. When Parnassus on Wheels, a quaint little novel about an itinerant bookseller, was published back in 1917, many readers decided that they had found their man. Christopher Morley was clever with a whimsical plot and wrote in the studied, slightly archaic style of another century. The tweedy, pipe-smoke flavor of his looks and books reminded many of the country-squire tradition among English men of letters. With each succeeding Morley work, readers who had cut their teeth on J. M. Barrie...
...your stupid wiseguy doing his worst to deny Nature equals your clever fool who did his best to possess...
Weinbaum began manufacturing his stories during the early '30s. He populated Mars with clever, ostrichlike creatures who could learn snatches of human speech. On Jupiter's moon, lo, he placed giggling "loonies," dimwits with balloon-shaped heads and five-foot necks-not to mention six-inch "slinkers," nasty pests that looked like black rats wearing capes. Science fictioneers credit Weinbaum with two important contributions to their field. Where predecessors had concentrated on gadgetry and ordinary men, he tried to create characters for his non-human aliens, tried to weave his doughpots and other planetary faunas into his plots...