Word: pointlessness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Brazilian representatives finally came out from Recife, Galváo's mind was made up for him. The long-patient 607 passengers on the Santa Maria shouted that they had had enough of pointless wandering, short rations, and the sweltering discomfort caused by the breakdown of the ship's air conditioning. The docile 360-man crew - only five of whom had deserted to the rebels-grew mutinous at the thought of putting to sea again under Galváo. During the scuffling argument, someone was pushed through a glass door in the lounge. Three crew members jumped...
...direction displayed no sympathy with Mr. Houghton's more serious moods. His direction was geared to the slapstick in the play, and he seemed, both in his acting and direction, embarassed by its seriousness. The stage was always full of actors in motion--slick, sometimes funny, and always pointless motion. It was a desperate attempt to breathe some life into the production, but all the energy seemed somehow irrelevant. Unfortunately, even the slapstick often lost effect because it lacked the one vital element of slapstick--timing. The actors achieved varying degrees of mediocrity, and the set, by Donald Soule, seemed...
Fictioneer Outdone. Evelyn Waugh is no newcomer to the chattering kraal of African commentary. It is 30 years now since the young, not yet famous writer packed his traps for the Dark Continent. It seemed a pointless excursion at the time, but he was convinced that Europe was entering on a phase of barbarism, at the very moment the African races believed that they were emerging from it. The perception of that parallel lay at the heart of Waugh's satiric genius. His Bright Young People-the Mayfair savages of his English novels-were tribal kin to his jungle...
...plot is simple and tight enough but several factors have distended the play in such a way as to make it reflect, very effectively, the vigor and the sullenness, the intensity and the aimlessness, to which the actors are accustomed--loose and pointless dialogues, interludes of street dancing (choreographed by two of the girls, Pauline Dempsey and Elaine "Muzzy" Moscatel, often disinterested actions, often passionless speech, and informal acting heightened by improvisation...
...Jack Kerouac, the beats' most beamish boy. His characters ride a reeling carousel equipped with stolen cars instead of painted tigers, and to the reader they are mostly blurred faces. The trouble is that when the whirling stops, the faces are still blurred and the conversation still pointless-jointless. A happy solution has occurred to Author Kerouac; he has written a volume in which the whirling is continuous and the characters negligible - in other words, a travel book...