Word: dulled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...know why, exactly, the state of the novel is so bad. I suppose that the growth of journalism in the past few centuries has had a lot to do with it-people are used to reading prose that is straightforward, factual, and dull, which tells a story in the fewest possible words and doesn't bore them with details. The result, of course, has been that English prose style has gone straight to Hell. The Erich Segals of this world are cleaning up on junk that shouldn't get them a passing grade in English...
...good intentions get lost in a bureaucratic maze. When Parkinson analyzes beards through history and finds them to be a sure indicator of lack of civilization (a thicket behind which older men could hide their uncertainties), he is at his bluff best. But the crotchety professor can also be dull. His strident common sense often sounds simply pompous; and his habit of describing imaginary conversations seems contrived. Parkinson's biggest problem is best described in another law as yet unelucidated by the master: iconoclasm amuses in direct proportion to its originality...
...prison is married life in a poor, dull town. Belle, as the author calls herself, was born angry. Her adored father warned: "Beware of cross women." Her mother, already disappointed at the girl's plainness, added, "You will scare the boys if you look like that." But Belle quickly finds herself a breezy chap named George Ames, who looks like her father. Somehow she assumes George shares her unformed aspirations...
COMMERCIAL television has persistently hung on to the few, tired formulas and techniques for broadcasting that are supposed to guarantee, no matter how dull and repetitious they are, maximum profits for the sponsors. Pro football coverage, with its development of such things as isolated stop-action telephoto instant-replays, has undergone more innovation in the video medium than any other kind of broadcasting; the changes it has fostered are indicative of the kind of possibilities the medium has. But aside from these, the possibilities for innovation are still virtually unexplored. Groove Tube is, for the most part, produced in amateurish...
However, the film gets inextricably bogged down when the mercenaries mix with the peasants. Clavell's characters are dull when they're not in action; the soldiers are grossly sensual and self-serving, and, as is equally realistic, the peasants are stolid, superstitious folk. But Clavell remains outside them: the only characters he feels comfortable with are those of Caine and Sharif, the former having the remaining good lines. (All-suffering Sharif complains bitterly that one of his favorite country maidens is one of a group picked to whore for the soldiers in exchange for protection. Says Caine: "Three months...