Word: seemly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nearly 80 more manuals went to press. The parodist Donald Ogden Stewart wrote a burlesque of Emily Post called Perfect Behavior, starting with his definition: "The perfect gentleman is he who never unintentionally causes pain." Manners are always simultaneously something more and something less than they seem. They are the body language of a culture, the gesticulations of its soul: in the profound formality of the Japanese, for example, or the surly and almost pathological caution of the Russians, it is possible to divine both personal and national character. Manners can be quite serious; the survival of the tribe always...
Children of the upper class generally seem to show less respect to their elders than the offspring of the upwardly mobile. The hulking, mouth-breathing surliness of adolescence knows no social distinctions, of course. But the upper-class child, while able to engage easily in small talk that won't bore his elders, rarely says "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma'am" when talking to his parents' friends. The custom still applies in those provinces of the middle class where authoritarianism has not fallen into disrepute...
...casual dignity rather well; the rules are fairly well established and usually observed. They start from the presumption that not everyone may be inclined to participate. Therefore neither the host nor hostess may be the first to strip, nor may they even suggest it. Rather, convention requires what seems to be a spontaneous impulse on the part of a guest, who ideally should be a young woman. Men sometimes go first, but, if they do, are generally looked upon as show-offs or worse. This may seem reliquary chauvinism, but veterans of such evenings insist that the tone is somehow...
...hard to imagine the domestic side of Richard Wagner. Composing, conducting, fleeing creditors, courting kings, falling in love, venting his deep biases, building a theater and peopling an entire mythical world, all these things, yes. Life's dailiness seems somehow inappropriate to such a man as it is to most legendary artists. But his last 14 years are about to receive intense scrutiny by scholars, Wagner lovers and Wagner loathers-who seem to exist in equal numbers -for they were recorded in torrential detail by his second wife Cosima in her diary...
...supposed to be an eccentric, funny, loveable guy, with a kind heart and an abundance of home-spun wisdom. Stallone, however, fails to give his character any depth. Cosmo is an amalgamation of what Stallone thinks are appealing traits, calculated to gain our sympathy. He does not seem real. Looking into Cosmo's eyes, one only sees emptiness. His jokes are not even funny...