Word: sharpness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...arrange a long-term settlement between Jews and Arabs. He left behind a sputtering Palestine. The Jewish terrorist organization Irgun Zvai Leumi accused the Israeli government, in accepting the truce, of "submitting to shame rather than continuing the struggle." The implied threat to break the truce brought a sharp statement from Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: "The Government will not suffer any attempt to be made by anyone in our midst to break the truce . . . Anyone who attempts to break the discipline of the state at this hour will be considered an enemy of Israel...
...Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner conducting; Columbia, 10 sides). A wag once tried to describe this fustian piece: "It is he, the Hero, and he has been drinking again. He is in E flat, and his cuffs are soiled by numerous dissonances . . . Four plain-clothes detectives come in on a sharp glissando, and, seizing the Hero, throw over his head a dark-tasting chord . . ." Performance: good. Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting; Columbia, 6 sides). Some of the pleasantest music Richard Strauss ever wrote, pleasingly played. Recordings: good...
...FOOLISH GENTLEWOMAN (330 pp.) -Margery Sharp-Little, Brown...
...Margery Sharp has a sharp eye. But it takes more than that to be a really good writer. In her slight, pleasant novels (The Nutmeg Tree, Cluny Brown) she has neatly observed the small, telling details of social manners that weightier novelists often pass by. Her special gift is sketching, snippily but without too much malice, the idiosyncratic types that seem still to populate the English countryside as in the days of Jane Austen. (This gift has paid off well; three of her novels have been chosen as monthly selections by the Book-of-the-Month Club...
This situation is promising, but it never quite pays off. For one thing, about halfway through the novel the reader gets an uneasy suspicion that Miss Sharp is trying to smuggle in a little Heavy Thought with the froth. What's worse, neither the comic nor dramatic possibilities of the clash between Tilly and Simon are fully exploited. In the end, the novel has no more sparkle than decarbonated soda water. But even flat soda can quench a summer day's thirst...