Word: priggish
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Cleopatra is a gauge, the Romans were still somewhat "nouveau riche." They were also provincial, priggish as regards the women, crude as regards the men. On the other hand the Egyptians portrayed here are scarcely subtle. The humor in "Cleopatra" is sometimes excellent, but one never knows whether it was intended, and, therefore, whether to give the producer the credit or not. It would have been wiser to have less platinum blondes in the supporting cast, they seem a trifle anachronous when they predominate in the Egyptian population. Do not expect history, and go when feeling a little mellow...
...plan such as this is open to just condemnation by those idealistic individuals who denounce any system of honors, or even of grading, on the grounds that it obscures the true objects of education in a search for glory. General honors are obviously sought by those priggish souls who value a "cum" solely for vanity's sake, rather than for any real initiative and genuine scholarship which such recognition ought certainly to represent. Moreover, the similar terminology of the degree "cum laude" in General Studies, and of that in Special Studies does not offer an adequate or equitable initiative requisite...
...Myron is a conscientious worker whereas Ora fancies himself as a poet. When they leave home, Myron is content to get an even more menial job at another hotel, but Ora drifts to Manhattan, his idea of Parnassus. Step by step, but with a fatherly eye more on priggish Myron than on piggish Ora, Author Lewis reports their slow, vicissitudinous careers. Ora finds the fleshpots of Greenwich Village agree with him. He writes one good but unsuccessful novel, the fruit of a brutally selfish love affair with a mulatto girl. Then he supports himself in uneven luxury by literary hackwork...
...incest. The worst white man on a little island attracts the attention of a withered spinster-missionary; to the amused amazement of everyone except the predatory virgin, she conquers him. The man-eating Russian wife of a Scottish scientist tries to get her claws on her husband's priggish young assistant; his heredity and the environment of a storm rescue him, ruin her. A red-blooded Britisher, finding himself a cuckold, prepares to do the traditionally manly thing; takes wiser advice in time...
...nineties and of American cynics of the twenties. The hero is a prig conceived to be representative of the insignificant conservative. The author explains, by the story, that the prig was so developed by being the son of an insignificant conservative prig, by being nurtured on insignificant priggish conservatism. The basic cause of the hero's state, and of that of his ancestors and descendants, is day-dreaming...