Word: matter-of-fact
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Fantasy without coyness is rare, and fantasy about childhood without overdoses of syrup is even rarer. The 5,000 Fingers, even at its most fantastic, contrives to keep its brisk sense of humor and its matter-of-fact, child's-eye view. The villains employed by Dr. T. are a carefree mixture of pirates, heavies out of The Arabian Nights, dabblers in atomic science, and cheerleaders for a rival junior high football team (one of the best of the picture's ten songs is a close-harmony, walls-of-poison-ivy number, softly sung by a group...
...story, "My Uncle Tom Was a Burgler." The youthful narrator's critical appraisal of his uncle's fumbling attempts at a criminal career is delightful reading at times. The ending is a bit off-key; the improbable coincidence leading to a happy ending goes poorly with the matter-of-fact tenor of the rest of the story. But the story is enjoyable and should show both local writers and editors that light fiction has a place in the Advocate...
...matter-of-fact tone of a chronicler, she sped through the early lines, told how she, Medea, had lavished her love on her husband Jason, only to have him leave her for another woman. Gradually, with ever-widening vocal leaps and roller-coaster plunges, she worked up to her thoughts of revenge and-with a piccolo shrilling-to the murder of her own and Jason's children. The piece ended in a gloomy postlude. When it was over, the orchestra gave Thebom a concerted "Bravo!", and the audience, once it recovered its composure, called her back five times...
...Happy Place, Ludwig Bemelmans serves up the recipe that he first concocted many years ago for adult consumption ; it consists of some absurd character put down-in a setting that is just around the block and dolloped with matter-of-fact nonsense. His present hero, a city rabbit named Winthrop, is not conjured out of a top hat but from the place city rabbits normally come from-"a toy village enclosed by chicken wire and located in Section B, on the sixth floor of a big New York department store." Winthrop is first reduced from $2.98 to $1.78 because...
Where may the new religious movement flower first? "It might not start in America or in any European or Western country," said Toynbee, "but in India. Conquered India will take her matter-of-fact American conqueror captive . . . The center of power in the world will ebb back from the shores of the Atlantic to the Middle East, where the earliest civilizations arose 5,000 or 6,000 years...