Word: off-handedly
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Elwyn Brooks ("Andy") White for eleven years wrote the oxymoronic introductory paragraphs to each New Yorker issue. The tone of these paragraphs, a kind of precocious, off-hand humming, has been imitated but never exactly reproduced by his successors. In 1937 he resigned from The New Yorker, after writing an inimitable farewell whose gamut ranged from a baritone sigh to a neurasthenic squeak. True to his theme (that the town was getting too much for him) he went off to live in the Maine countryside, at North Brooklin. Thence he contributes a monthly page (considerably duller than his New Yorker...
...talking tour from Manhattan to Seattle and back, Wage & Hour Administrator Elmer Frank Andrews found businessmen worrying most about overtime pay for their higher salaried employes. Back in Washington last week, Elmer Andrews gave employers hope that they may soon be relieved of this wage-hour problem. Off-hand in press conference he indicated that he would accept an amendment to the law, perhaps a plan to remove restrictions on the hours of employes who get over $150 a month, have guaranteed annual vacations and other privileges, yet are not now exempt as executives or professionals. Whether his own legal...
...served its purpose, Ozenfant now believes that it is waning, wants painters to work for the social world and to paint for everybody pictures that will be recognizable to everybody. In Seattle he is preparing an exhibition of his own painting, finishing a semi-autobiographical volume, dropping the oblique, off-hand remarks that distinguish his work far more than its formal arguments. Typical Ozenfant aphorisms: "It is not art that fails, but the artist." "Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary." "Let us once a year . . . enjoy all our rights, including that of not abusing them." "There...
...dean is his most important characteristic. Unlike a great professor who can draw people to him by the wealth of his learning, however disagreeable and cantankerous he may be, a dean must inspire the respect and loyalty of everybody who deals with him. A chance or thoughtless word, though off-hand and unintentional, may convince an undergraduate that the heart of University Hall is black and malign. But, given a man with an attractive personality and the ability to manage people, the opportunities of assistant deans for influence in the educational world are infinite in scope and variety...
There's one boy on the squad who lives at home. Off-hand we'd say he probably got home every night about 7:30 o'clock and furthermore he has to leave at the same time in the morning if he has a 9 o'clock class. In his Freshman year he passed everything, and we don't call a "D' passing. This year the same fellow claims that he's just learned how to study, and that he's going to do better...