Word: comically
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Manhattan, a group of comic-strip addicts formed the American Society for the Advancement of the Piebald Eyeball, solemnly pledged themselves always to pencil dots in the center of Little Orphan Annie's eyes before turning to the sports page...
...Punch, the cartoons were merely illustrations of elaborate written jokes. Today's Punch-like its U.S. contemporary, the New Yorker-strives for the drawing that is comic in itself, trims its captions to a single punch line. Punch frequently gets deep into politics and economics, with no intent to be funny. It also carries serious reviews of the movies, theater and books-but with a difference. Says Editor Knox: "The New Yorker is so scornful of everything. Nothing is quite good enough in their eyes. We try not to be too bitter or unkind...
Writing feverishly, in crisp words, Richard Boyer rises above the tweedy objectivity of New Yorker profiles to tell the searing story of American seamen and the union they have built. The seamen are workers at sea, not comic opera swashbucklers, and the union they have put together is the N.M.U., certainly no joke. It is a story of men who are reweaving the country's social fabric, men who think about democracy a good part of the time and who act on their thought. The book is called "The Dark Ship," because that is the kind of title that sells...
...nearing 70, Author Sinclair can still reel off his special Lanny-brand of history and hokum at comic-strip clip. "All I have to do is turn the spigot," he once explained, "and the water flows." And, though critics and historians may not like him, Lanny has a public. In Europe-and in Russia (where Sinclair is considered a major U.S. literary figure, along with William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell) the Lanny Budd volumes are becoming almost as well known as Author Sinclair's The Jungle or The Brass Check. Several of the Lanny series have already been published...
...Tiger Fitzpatrick, spavined prizefighter ("all I want is a chance at this so-called Braddock"); Mothmar Acord ("a dish-shaped face, discolored by oriental suns and high fevers") ; Sinclair Wensday ("a cocaine personality . . . tall and popular . . . Galahad gone to the devil"). At his best Author Kersh writes like a comic Soho Gorki, drawing wicked, lively sketches of the barflies, pimps, fairies and phonies of London's bohemia. But Prelude never really gets going and never comes to an end, simply limping from sketch to sketch, as though even Author Kersh were never quite sure what he intended...