Word: dullness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Once upon a time, Professor Charles Townsend Copeland went to a particularly dull houseparty. Conversation dragged and the afternoon appeared to be a total loss. When he returned, some friends asked him whether or not he had enjoyed himself. "I should have been bored," Professor Copeland replied, "had I not been there myself...
...published by the late Thomas Mann, is a classic instance of deutscher Witz: a good joke, badly told but brilliantly explained, heartily laughed at by the teller, laboriously retold from several other angles, and reduced, in conclusion, to its philosophic essence. In this case, unfortunately, the essence is a dull epigram. "Love the world," Mann's hero cries, "and the world will love you." The statement expresses the mercantile theory of morals, and Mann's man (Henry Bookholt), faithfully represented on the screen, is intended to embody it. Born in the Rhineland, Felix Krull begins life...
...says in shame and confusion that he outshot 30 Villistas because "the Lord took hold of me" (actually he hates his father and loathes religion). Another makes it apparent that he charged an almost impregnable position alone because he thought it would look good on his record. A foolish, dull-eyed boy vaulted a gate and opened it under hailing fire because he was too stupid to imagine being shot...
...Though dull and dowdy by U.S. slick-paper standards, the prospering weeklies reflect Britain's war-born hunger for higher living standards. For the middle-and working-class women who form the bulk of their readership, the magazines are handbag-crammed with counsel on beauty care, clothes, cooking, etiquette, interior decoration and romance...
Without exception, the girls felt worthless and insecure. Though they paraded in mink coats and made a point of being seen riding in Cadillacs from expensive apartments in the best parts of town, they were forever afraid that the world was ready to laugh at them. To dull their anxiety they sought relief in drink (though none was technically an alcoholic); 15 used marijuana, and six took to heroin. Said one: "Being a call girl helped me overcome my inferiority complex. I used to feel very unattractive to men, but since so many of them want...