Word: humorless
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Martin Amis is, and has been for several decades now, one of the world's greatest living novelists, and the fact that he attracts some of the world's worst reviews only makes him more interesting. A relentlessly intelligent, funny, and kind writer, he's endlessly interested in stupid, humorless, cruel people, and in his new book House of Meetings (Knopf; 256 pages) he turns for a fresh supply of them to Stalin-era Russia. Ranging back and forth from frozen Arctic prison camps to the unseemly capitalist free-for-all of the post-Soviet era, House of Meetings...
...There is this paradox that terror is always a concession of impotence and insecurity and illegitimacy, and Stalin's rule had that. And with terror comes boredom, in the oddest way. Mohamed Atta brought boredom to us too. It's not just airport queues, with some humorless airport official frisking your 6-year-old daughter. It's the confrontation with the dependent mind. There's no argument possible. We share no points of discourse. It's like being with any fanatical Christian, for instance. The higher faculties just close down, because there's nothing for them to do. So there...
...matter one Yale professor’s view of Harvard as a humorless place, people throughout academia are wondering whether Harvard is the next place for Richard...
...struggle to find the perfect balance between wife, mother, and “co-president” to the discussion of a woman’s role in the United States. “She rejected the simple media polarities whereby traditionalists were happy homemakers and feminists were humorless careerists,” he writes. “Hillary Rodham Clinton set out to prove to feminists and anti-feminists alike that modern career women could be good old-fashioned moms...
...GERMANY'S TRUE FACE Bill Saporito's essay on the world cup, "A Month of Smiles and Sourpusses" [July 10], left me outraged, especially his ironic reference to Germany as "the taciturn, inflexible, humorless country with the inedible cuisine." My country made a great effort to be host of the World Cup and help fans from other countries feel welcome. It is sad when old prejudices are brought up in an attempt at satire. For the first time in a long while, people in this country feel national pride and are free to show it. Germany doesn't deserve such...