Word: humdrum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dare by his wife, and there were times when Cooper seemed to regard these as his most exciting work. Though his own Natty Bumppo-the Deerslayer-eventually slew this illusion, Cooper could write: "Europe itself is a Romance, while all America is a matter of fact, humdrum, common sense region from Quoddy to Cape Florida...
...earlier book, Someone Like Von (TIME, Dec. 28, 1953), Author Dahl specializes in the horror of normality. The eleven lethal short stories in this collection open on the most humdrum level, with neither a piece of furniture nor a part of speech out of place. Gradually, things get askew: the lovable baby begins to look peculiar; the cat sleeping in the sun opens an almost human eye; the corpse in the hospital is not quite as dead as it looks...
...intact but more testy than tender; an estranged college-age son who loathes him; a foreclosed career as a brilliant young cinemactor; the faces of friends who died in the Spanish Civil War or at the talent-poisoning wells of Hollywood. The anodynes are joyless-alcohol, sleeping pills, the humdrum routine of his NATO underling post in Paris, which is good work, he feels, but not greatly good...
...promotional calendars, supposed to have been mailed a year before, still have not been mailed out, and the stamp money has gone for beer. At least two young women think they are engaged to him. Because the clacking of his own tongue can drown the ceaseless humming of the humdrum, he has told an elaborate and pointless series of lies...