Word: dour
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...Jules Houcke, 64. who did not even make a single public campaign speech. Former Socialist Premier Guy Mollet, who commands a smooth local machine as longtime mayor of Arras, ran 1,200 votes behind a little-known Gaullist. In Normandy, former Radical Premier Pierre Mendés-France, 55, dour Cassandra of the intellectual left, was hopelessly outdistanced by urbane Jean de Broglie. 41, De Gaulle's civil service chief. From Toulouse to Versailles, many other old-line politicians were defeated by newcomers who, in the French phrase, were "parachuted" into critical constituencies...
Overwhelmed, as I am, by the Protestant ethic and its dour and anal tenets, I felt impaled on an Anglo-Catholic wheel of fire from the moment the titles appeared. The letters (designed by Saul Bass) were all formed from phallic components, decorated with blue vegetable coloring and topped with maraschino cherries. In the background one could make out M. Quouquou and Sr. Picasso rais-Yul Brynner on a flaming cross...
Clearly, there is truth in this vision, but the dour alternative that prevails today is no answer either. Just as there are many to whom meals without women are dismal affairs, so too there are others who would decry the end of insulation from the female. At present, the misogynists have their way, but under the plan suggested here, neither side would suffer unduly. For those who wish it, girls will be there; for the rest, the dining halls are surely large enough to provide tables and escape. The man who feels unsafe even when women are sitting at some...
...Doren, Playwright William Saroyan, Poets John Ciardi, Conrad Aiken and Muriel Rukeyser. That mistress of creepy grownup prose, Novelist Shirley Jackson (The Lottery), has written a sunlit winner, Nine Magic Wishes. Erskine Caldwell, the drugstore Rabelais, has "dumfounded" Crowell-Collier with a primer described as "amazingly gentle." The usually dour Playwright Arthur Miller offers Jane's Blanket, which he outlines thus: "A little girl named Jane sadly watches her big pink blanket grow smaller and smaller while she grows bigger and bigger. Finally Jane is made happy again when threads from her blanket warm a nest for baby birds...
...last book, Author Dougherty gave his narrative that leaven of malice which is the salt of a certain kind of novel writing. In The Commissioner, the reader may feel malice-especially if he is a frequent traffic-ticketee-but the author clearly does not. Anthony Russell, the dour Irish moralist who is the police commissioner of the title, has Dougherty's worshipful approval. Russell's problems are believable-what to do about his oldest friend, the chief, who has been caught doing a favor for a racketeer; how to deal with a powerful Negro leader who thinks mistakenly...