Word: ineptness
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...comic gems in the '20s and '30s, it was still possible to have a truly innocent hero, like Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall or William Boot in Scoop. A dark half-century later, Boyd's Henderson Dores would not be believable as a pure man; he must be inept and pusillanimous. When last seen, he has lost his job and his women, and his life hangs on his ability to outrun a real attacker. So much, says Boyd, for the insufficiently corrupt...
...than those that appear in many best sellers. They underestimate McCullough's mastery of sublime inanity. What other writer would somberly portray a heroine "feeling her purpose trickle away between her legs like a slow haemorrhage"? Where else could one find a statement both so unconsciously offensive and grammatically inept as "A devout Jew but nonetheless the most Christian of gentlemen, his sins were purely sins of omission and due to thoughtlessness and lack of perception"? No wonder this novel promises to become a blockbuster; readers will be savoring its thousands of gaffes well into the third millennium...
GILLETTE IS NOT the only lost, at the Hasty Pudding this month. Claptrap, the other one of two new comedies mounted by the ART this month, biographies the wacked-out encounter of an incompetent actor with an inept author. American theater is fascinated with losers; with the exception of musical comedy, most original plays seem to have spring from the forehead of Willy Loman...
...would be posed by a Communist threat to a friendly nation that is not formally an ally. And then the threat might well be raised not by open aggression but by a combination of military, political and economic tactics that Moscow is often adept at orchestrating and Washington usually inept at countering: the front groups, the street demonstrations, the infiltrated unions, the guerrilla units. One reason the U.S. sent troops to Viet Nam is that it lacked other alternatives to help its allies prevail against this sort of subversion. In fact, developing a capacity to engage in such political action...
...quichification, greenmail, dealignment, watershed elections and apron strings (the political coattails of a female candidate). But students of the language agree that adjectives do most of the work, smuggling in actual information under the guise of normal journalism. Thus the use of soft-spoken (mousy), loyal (dumb), high-minded (inept), hardworking (plodding), self-made (crooked) and pragmatic (totally immoral). A person who is dangerous as well as immoral can be described as a fierce competitor or gut fighter, and a meddler who cannot leave his subordinates alone is a hands-on executive. When strung together properly, apparently innocent modifiers...