Word: humdrum
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...creator; but no scholar hitherto has advanced so logically from detail to totality, and none has formulated as precisely this ultimate answer to the problem, as the author of this book. Not that Meyer was the spirit of an Italian condottiere in the body of a burgher of the humdrum Swiss nineteenth century, but that through overcompensation for his won sickly body and for the narrow sphere of his activity, he fied--from weakness, not from exuberance of strength--to the grandeur of the times and heroes he represents in his works...
...Pullman Car Hiawatha" you are supposed to imagine, with the aid of a few chairs placed vis-a-vis, the interior of a Pullman on its way from Manhattan to Chicago. The action, which starts off realistically enough, goes rapidly symbolic: Archangels Gabriel and Michael, other such un-humdrum figures appear. Of the other plays two ("Queens of France," "Love and How to Cure It") are farces; two out-realize Belasco...
From the Moscow viewpoint Comrade Litvinov has always been moderate-a daring moderate in a land of humdrum radicals. Last week he dared at Geneva, or almost dared, to cast doubt on the popular Russian thesis and belief that a Soviet-Capitalist World War is inevitable, coming soon. Prowling on thin ice, risking his popularity at home, Russia's moderate bear growled softly...
Bribe or Bait? Ostentatiously humdrum in style, the two sentences italicized above were in fact the sensational nub of the King-Emperor's speech: the Labor Party's speech. The first pledges Scot MacDonald to risk the very life of his Labor Cabinet by asking Parliament to repeal the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Bill, which was passed to prevent a recurrence of Great Britain's paralyzing "General Strike" (TIME, May 10 to May 24, 1926). It has generally been expected that the Liberal Party would side against the Labor Cabinet on this issue and thus produce the Cabinet...
Upon that background a young Oxford boy and his sister are introduced. They bring to the humdrum provincials a taste of the outside world that was theirs before marriage tied their existance down to a limited routine. The boy is a somewhat typical English lady as lady novelists conceive him to be, and as, indeed, he may in truth be. He is charming and his restless spirit brings to life the suppressed longings of the women he meets. His sister, who is married but does not live with her husband, is the female counterpart of Hugh. She effects...