Word: dulling
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Robert Preston, this disaster's star, noted recently that it's the most "literary" play he's read in years, and indeed it is. Take, for example, the twelfth century similes: "You're like the rocks of Stonehenge, nothing can knock you down;" or, "You're dull as plainsong." or then again, "You're so foul you're fair." At times, it seems like the entire purpose of the drama is to show that the Plantagnets were, after all, just folks. "You're a failure as a father," the adolescent Prince John accuses the King, while the Queen muses, "Children...
...world-the gothic twilight of the silent movie, the pratfall, the Quixote on a treadmill-dimmed when the sound stage dawned. Hopper's world-of glamour, gossip and low jinks among the high-lifes-survived largely because she made it seem exciting even when it was dull. When TV nearly killed the movies, she helped rescue them with exposés and exclusives, chitchat and charm; to 30 million readers, Hedda Hopper was Celluloid City with hats. Last week, when the Scold and the Sphinx died-within hours of each other -the shock came not with the news...
...island run by a cruel dictator; the narrator, owner of a deserted luxury hotel, is carrying on an affair with an ambassador's wife; the action is a network of plots and violent encounters with the sinister secret police, climaxing in an unachieved revolution. But the book is deadly dull. The characters drag through their parts listlessly, like unconvinced actors, hardly caring what happens to them. Events pile up without meaning or suspense. Graham Greene has written some exciting--and meaningful--books. What went wrong with this...
...unreal characters aren't enough to make a book this dull. After all, we do care about the vegetarians enough to cringe mildly for them. And a few of the other characters are interesting, too: the little criminal, who is always making up stories about himself and planning great escapades which invariably fail, or the Haitian doctor, a gentle, philosophical communist. And there's not nearly enough about the narrator's mother, who writes to her Haitian lover: "Marcel, I know I'm an old woman and as you say a bit of an actress. But please go on pretending...
...suspecting a liaison between them. Although others in the book comment on his courage, his only real motive is baseless jealousy. There seems to be nothing in this man worth writing about, no interests or emotions. And any story seen from his viewpoint must be as pointless and dull...