Word: fatuousness
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Sympathy is not a necessary virtue in an excellent writer. In Miss Herbert, however, Stead reveals a touch of the sadist. She sets her victim up in revealing scenes and then dispatches her with hatpins of stainless prose. Miss Herbert expires totally unaware that she is leaking fatuous optimism, banalities and supercilious prejudice. In fact, her last recorded words are a threat to write an autobiography that "will open some eyes...
...American view of Russia has been refracted over the last half-century through layers of repugnance, infatuation, loathing, horror, suspicion, complacency-and now, in doubts about détente, by suspicion again. It has run a course from Lincoln Steffens' fatuous "I have been over into the future, and it works" to the nightmares of John Foster Dulles. In imagining Russia, Americans have always had a tendency to project their own illusions upon a wall of blank ignorance...
VIOLENCE, FEMINISM, SEX, lip gloss, revenge--it could have been interesting. Instead, for cheap thrills, Lipstick exploits the phenomenon it pretends to condemn, making rape into fatuous entertainment. We can't help wondering who is meant to be responsible for the crime. The anaesthetized Chris, who was only doing her job? Or Stuart, who was so inconsiderate as to act out a fantasy that all men who can see and read are encouraged to have? The cosmetics business which peddles the tools of seduction, the advertising industry which purveys the promise, or the women who demand the product? Where does...
...fatuous young writer asks a doctor friend for material for a short story, something that will "out-Maupassant Maupassant." The friend responds with an experience from his youth, a naggingly inexplicable encounter with a senior boy at an English boarding school. As the tale is told, the listener grows restive: the narrative is replete with hidden motives, loose ends and awkward, tag-along sequels. "There is too much in it," the writer finally declares. He cannot possibly turn such a shapeless bundle of facts into a proper short story...
...doctor has ordered no excitement," he explained. Elizabeth Taylor and other members of the cast of The Blue Bird, the first joint Soviet-American film production, were too busy to take time off from their filming in Leningrad to watch the liftoff. Instead, they sent a fatuous message to the spacemen: "If you meet in space our small bluebird of happiness, please take it with you and return it to earth...