Word: humdrum
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...whom Messrs. Ochs & Wiley sent to Antarctica to write daily rhapsodies about the Byrd expedition, eloquent Reporter Russell Owen, explained: "The newspaper in this age of uneconomic unhappiness and social unrest has discovered in the modern' explorer and aviator an excellent anodyne to our disappointing and humdrum life. Ephemeral their exploits may be, but for the time that they are chronicled I think we all get from them a feeling that this, after all, is not such a bad old world, when man can dare greatly for an idea or ideal as the case...
...people, who would hold the attention of intelligent novel-readers or playgoers. But although the author-who also helped write the play-has reported with infinite care the humdrum speech and actions of her characters, she has failed to make any part of their dull lives seem deeply significant. If, as some critics advised, the ghastly hospital episode were omitted from the play, the drama would never reach any height at all. Roadside is written and played with intense and commendable sincerity. Playwright Lynn Riggs has written the saga of a Texas superman who wears a 10-gal. hat, bursts...
...Henry is reported missing, how Bascom comes home on leave, how the triangle is finally flattened out into a humdrum circle, may be left to the reader. Author Edmonds has studied his people, listened to their speech, and remembered what he has seen and heard. His minor characters, crotchety or crabbed, leave a more memorable impression than the more generally typical protagonists. The two figures of Pat and Leo, Dickensian country carpenters wandering inseparably through the story, are like Mutt & Jeff come true...