Word: dourness
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Died. Edward ("Senator") Ford, 82, dour-visaged vaudeville comedian who wisecracked his way to fame on radio's Can You Top This show in the '40s; of cancer; in Greenport, N.Y. In 1940 Ford teamed with Comedians Harry Hershfield and Joe Laurie Jr. to challenge radio audiences to a game of comic oneupmanship; at its peak the show attracted 10,000 jokes a week from a regular audience of 10 million listeners. Typical Ford rib-tickler: "Professor to student: 'Give me a definition of syntax.' Student to professor: 'My God, have they...
...Saul Bellow, and perhaps it is time to admit that he is a seer. The author of The Adventures of Angle March, Henderson the Rain King and Herzog observes his age with no excessive charity. Chaos? Yes. Senselessness? Yes. Disintegration and despair? Be the author's guest. The dour view itself is not remarkable. Well-wrought chaos and subtly evoked senselessness have never been in such abundant literary supply. A reader thinks, with varying respect, of Mailer, Heller, Vonnegut, Cheever, Barth...
...with clear authority, but he was even better known for his gentleness and good humor. Tall and strong-voiced, his amiable face framed by a shock of flowing white hair, McKay was an affable new image of Mormonism to a world that had previously seen the Mormon leaders as dour, dark-suited figures. He was perhaps the first Mormon president to treat non-Mormons as generously as members of his own faith...
...discoverer of these pitiful carcasses is Witold, a dour, perfervid student who, with an equally jittery friend, has decided to board in the country while studying for exams. They tramp along a road in stifling heat until they encounter the hanged sparrow. As if it were a signal, they check into the next house with a guest sign. There are no other guests, only a retired bank manager named Leo Wojtys, his wife, his daughter and her new husband and, for that obligatory grace note, a deformed servant...
That new Attorney General was dour John Mitchell. His message was soon clear: less permissiveness and more punishment in federal law enforcement. Instead of Clark's philosophizing on individual rights, the nation would have aggressive prosecution of offenders. Whereas Clark had felt that his department should be concerned as much with social justice as with law enforcement, Mitchell took a narrower view of his job -simply as a lawyer for the Government. Clark was dismissed by Mitchell's deputy, Richard Kleindienst, as "a sociologist, not an aggressive prosecutor." Said Kleindienst condescendingly: "He would have been better...