Word: ennui
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While West German cities glisten with activity and night life, the workers' paradise next door seems to be like most paradises: merely dull. Its cities die at dusk, and those of its citizens who venture forth show on their faces the ennui, the boredom, of people who are constantly subjected to ideological blasts. East Germany's 40 daily newspapers are full of cant and propaganda, and even an annual folk fair has to be called a "Festival of Creative Socialism." Its intellectual life is almost totally noncreative, since voices that speak or hands that write with less than...
...grisly suicides thus far have proved largely useless in advancing Tri Quang's campaign to topple the Ky government. The reason: the great majority of Vietnamese Buddhist laymen are clearly unconvinced that the immolations are either justified or necessary, and horror has given way to exasperation and even ennui in a nation accustomed to violent death. "The people look the other way," explained one Vietnamese last week, "because the monks do not have a just cause now. They did in 1963." Nor have the stage-managed martyrs produced the waves of shock in the U.S. that rolled across...
IVANOV is the first of the Chekhovian unheroic heroes, who fall not from grace to sin but from enthusiasm to ennui, who do not so much lose their souls as their spirit. John Gielgud's listless acting and direction unfortunately seem infected with a similar malaise...
...vegetarian and assorted rebellious Haitians. These people do have a purpose in life, and I guess we are supposed to notice how much richer their lives are even though their projects fail. But this obvious meaning sticks in our throats. Greene has so infused his narrator's personality with ennui and detachment that we cannot imagine his caring about anything under any circumstances, with any upbringing. And the people who are committed are all such pitiful, blundering fools that we almost prefer the narrator to them. Perhaps their lives have more meaning, but when forced to compare their world views...
...theater settled for the old teacup comedies, some Eliot and Rattigan works and some stunning performances of the classics by Guinness, Olivier and Gielgud. Taken singly, the plays that London offered were often first-rate achievements by first-rate actors and directors. Taken together, there was something missing, an ennui in the audience and on the stage itself. "Apart from revivals and imports," complained Critic Kenneth Tynan in 1954, "there is nothing in the London theater that one dares discuss with an intelligent man for five minutes." Looking back, Director Peter Brook says that "the role of the theater based...