Word: dulling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...becomes excruciating. The problem can be handled in several ways. Sometimes it's the experience itself that is in some important way interesting, and the artfulness with which it is recorded becomes secondary (Lady Bird Johnson's White House Diary ); sometimes that relation is inverted, and clever treatment makes dull material zippy ( Cleo from 5 to 7. Warhol's novel-transcription a); sometimes neither event nor method is engaging, and the dismal result is a CBS Miss America pageant, or Windsong...
...many vacation-bound Americans, Richard Nixon had ambitious reading plans during his three-day rest in the Virgin Islands last week. He took along three books, each of them "dull," he said. It is not known how much reading he got done in all that sunshine, but one selection, Robert Blake's biography of Benjamin Disraeli,* was especially apt. The great Tory, who 100 years ago led his country into a memorable period of progressive reform, once wrote: "All power is a trust . . . we are accountable for its exercise; from the people, and for the people, all springs...
...look foolish indeed. At least part of the Japanese economic miracle, for instance, is the product of Japan's desire to imitate and beat the West. If the West decided that prosperity was no longer its goal, would Japan run so fast? Or, all by itself, might affluence dull the Japanese dedication to work? In other industrial countries, changing social attitudes that put less value on work might very well slow or stop the growth of prosperity. The population explosion, at the same time, might be defused by nothing more profound than a truly cheap, effective and uncomplicated method...
When Newhall left last month, he took with him much of the flamboyance and fun that has characterized the Chronicle during his 18 years as top editor. Almost singlehandedly, Newhall changed the Chronicle from a dull, gray daily loaded with international news into a paper full of snappy human interest stories, pictures with lots of cleavage and bizarre headlines. Example: "A Great City is Forced to Drink Swill" -followed by an "exposé" of the alleged bad coffee in restaurants...
Peter's tone of voice as he tells the story keeps the plot from lapsing into farce. Melancholy, not revolutionary fervor, afflicts him. Tolerantly, he still laughs at his father's dull jokes and politely listens to his college adviser. Nevertheless, he speaks for ambivalent, marijuana-struck youth when he wryly observes the machinelike aspects of civilization and objects to the meaninglessness of a life in which people become what they are "least afraid of becoming." Given such a context, Peter calculates that pot, with all its drawbacks, provides a means of honest and pleasurable rebellion and escape...