Word: contrivedness
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Baker's wit only partially conceals an earnest preoccupation with the sad state of the U.S. as he sees it. Too much is synthetic and contrived, he insists, from the current sterile search for the "real self" to the bloodless, painless violence that saturates TV. Everything is produced to...
If all-out economic warfare won't work, at least a few blows can be struck by wit. One cabal of American businessmen in Paris has contrived a sneaky conversational ploy:
This is a novel that anyone who was in Austria during the war or just after it could have jotted down from ordinary conversation and observation. It captures the slow fading of Austria's old escapist, professional charm before Nazi reality. It details the deportations, the mean spying for...
Jarrell's sudden death hasn't been as anonymous, and the Committee of memorialists has contrived to write something far more elaborate than the "anything will do" he asked for as an epitaph. Buried in this courteous and often adoring book are kernels of the familiar sad story of the...
After lonely, four-month journeys through the void, two ingeniously contrived spacecraft-one Russian, the other American-reached Venus last week. Methodically investigating the cloud-shrouded planet, they successfully radioed their findings back across 50 million miles of space to scientists on earth. The dual performance was perhaps the most...