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Word: oafishness (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...satire, Hecht's libretto is commonplace and even oafish; certainly Hazel Flagg uses a maximum of heavy artillery to inflict a minimum of wounds. Once again musicomedy, in the act of satirizing something else, has ended by satirizing itself-by pointing up its own excesses of color, blare, manpower and above all, length. Jule Styne's pounding music suggests a New York that never sleeps, and unconsciously gives the reason why Robert Alton's dances get to be relentlessly, unremittingly lively. If only there were less of everything in Hazel Flagg, it might...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Theater: New Musical in Manhattan, Feb. 23, 1953 | 2/23/1953 | See Source »

...careers-you sigh nostalgically that today's generation has no adventurous, imaginative lads ready to seek the weird heights, far away from the stereotyped big-company jobs. Well, your . . . generation has substituted oafish earnestness and the plodder's mentality for ability, brilliance, drive and talent . . . After all, it's easier to take the plodding, army-like promotions and security of big companies with two outings a year . . . live in a little house in the suburbs with a wife in Peck & Peck tweeds who knows all about zinnias and planned parenthood, and have two dirty-faced moppets playing...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Letters, Nov. 26, 1951 | 11/26/1951 | See Source »

Booster of the Bourjoyce. Red of hair and red of face, nervous, cadaverous, loud, looking (in the words of one observer) "corrugated, modest and oafish­a country-store type," Sinclair Lewis went on striding across the hills. But slowly, respectability, as it must to most rebels, came to Red Lewis. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which he had derided and denounced. His home town graciously forgave his insults, made him its favorite prodigal son. In a world of storm troopers and commissars, George Babbitt­and Red Lewis­did not look...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Hemisphere: SINCLAIR LEWIS: 1885-1951 | 1/22/1951 | See Source »

With the courteous horror of the Lilliputians for the oafish Gulliver, British commentators have recently felt obliged to pin down the invading monster of American culture, and examine it at close range. One of them, Sir William Haley, director general of BBC, began plans last fall for a series of talks by qualified intellectuals on the impact of America on European culture. BBC's five lecturers-three Englishmen and an Irishman, with Harvard Professor Perry Miller concluding in rebuttal a fortnight ago-seemed to pull up two stakes for every one they drove, but succeeded here & there in tethering...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: REFLECTIONS: Culture from America? | 1/23/1950 | See Source »

This plodding historical novel may possibly go like wildfire in the lending libraries, or even in Hollywood. The married life of long-suffering Alis and oafish Ansiau is described in great, sometimes tedious detail. Miss Oldenbourg's canvas is wide but her stitches are painstakingly small. Heroine Alis settles down to yearly pregnancies, frequent miscarriages, and incessant worries about the financial decline of the manor, the fruits of which her self-indulgent husband squanders on pomp, tournaments and the Crusades. Before old age, each has one fierce extramarital fling -and two bastards are added to the brood of infants...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Medieval Tapestry | 5/31/1948 | See Source »

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