Word: drabs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...failure of the narrative lies not so much in the crushingly mundane subject-matter as in Colwin's crushingly mudane treatment of it. She wheels forth a drab plot wrapped up in cardboard characters and unrealistic dialogue. Her clear, competent prose would serve as the ideal vehicle for conveying some idea, if only she had an idea to convey...
...Drab as this existence may sound, it was the essence of Larkin's poetic impulse. The calculated isolation, the lack of commitment were what enabled , him to write what little he did (four volumes in 40 years), just as the fate of the mockingly ironic outsider was his persistent subject. As he put it, "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth." Characteristically, he declined the post of poet laureate, but by the time he died of cancer at 63 in 1985, he had become a sort of grumpy unofficial laureate of all that was middling, thwarted and humorously...
Police arrived at a drab cinder-block real-estate office to find Mansur dressed in slippers and wrapped in a white-knit blanket; he was slumped in an easy chair with the telltale mask strapped to his face. A string tied to the middle finger of his left hand was connected to a clip on the tubes running from two cylinders labeled CARBON MONOXIDE. The body was gaunt, the skin yellow-green. For the past few months, Mansur had been too sick to drive and carried a morphine pump around with him to combat the pain. "He was in hell...
...interviews now appear to have changed focus and location, with Ring conducting his current queries in a drab 7th-floor office hidden in Holyoke Center...
...Boss was back with bluster intact, posing as Napoleon for a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED cover. Sportswriters welcomed him, for unlike the drab slumlords who run most teams, Steinbrenner is good copy: a reprobate of Dickensian, comic complexity. And like Saddam Hussein, the principal owner gets to gloat that he is in power while the fellow who humiliated him is out of a job. But the climate has changed since George and the Yanks were last on top. Bobby Bonds makes 10 times what Reggie Jackson did in 1978, and owners say they need a salary cap to restrain themselves from...