Word: dullness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This November's Advocate contains much that, like the season, is mature as well as sophisticated. Mature writing shows signs of careful reflection about the subject--sophisticated writing, merely about the style. Alone, the former will be dull at first reading, the latter perhaps not dull before the second or third reading. The two traits well combined make for what the uninitiated call good writing; they are best combined here in an excerpt from a picaresque novel by Richard Robinson, and in at least two poems, "Epithalamion, 4 A.M." by Stephen Sandy, and "To Speed and Greta" by Richard Sommer...
...share of what they produce, commune members get wages fixed by a ruling committee of party activists. At Sputnik Commune, 260 mess halls have been set up where members are fed free rice. These communal kitchens, plus communal nurseries and "mending brigades," relieve the wives of members from "dull and trivial housework," transform women, too, into all-purpose laborers. (The sole concession made to femininity: pregnant women get a month off work with half pay.) Even the old folks, for whom the commune has established "Happy Homes," are kept busy with scheduled chores, such as feeding the chickens...
...flashlight battery is weak, the (filament) in the bulb may still glow, but with only a dull red color...
...your life of being famous," she told New York Herald Tribune Reporter Joe Hyams, "because you think it will solve all your problems. What happens is you meet a lot of fascinating men, as you hoped you would, but just as many of them are married as the dull men you knew when you were obscure...
Back at the Annex, however, angry words are being spilled over bowls of dull pineapple chunks. The Radcliffe honor system, about the only virtuous thing left in the world these days, is seen doomed; and kuties who cultivate the seedy demeanor are complaining that now they will have to dress-up when they take integrated finals...