Word: shiftless
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...parsimonious use of cheap, irresponsible quacks has helped make the mother a hopeless dope fiend. The elder brother is a cynical and shiftless lush, the 23-year-old O'Neill an unconfident and consumptive fledgling writer. Nothing happens: four people merely taunt and bludgeon and resent one another while slowly, and at length explosively, revealing themselves. The play's movement is not forward, but downward and inward. In bedeviling propinquity, the drunken and the drugged exhibit spectral moments of love and convulsive moments of guilt, make accusations that are in effect confessions, go in for cruelties that...
Philadelphia's tabloid Daily News, once a shiftless tatterdemalion, has been gunning hard for circulation since Democratic Backer Matthew H. McCloskey Jr. took it over two years ago, infused it with money and ambition. Its chief rival: Publisher Walter Annenberg's Inquirer. Last week, in the climax of a month-long barrage, the News's guns pounded not only at the Inquirer's circulation, but at alleged payroll padding and loan-shark operations within the paper itself...
...however, rejects his suit, because the Count is not a very good security risk. The Count does not let this overly effect him, and returns to his flippant outlook. The most annoying thing about the book is the obvious and exuberant delight which the author takes in portraying a shiftless but engaging young man. The book is quite representative of run-of-the-mill fin de siecle writing, but the choice of Harvard scene and characters seems merely a vehicle for this glib and superficial kind of literature. In a few parts it is amusing, but one must wade through...
...Hutterites so fertile? Their religious doctrine encourages large families, and they shun contraceptives. In the prosperous Hutterite communities, even the shiftless are cared for; no father wor ries about supporting nine or ten children or keeping up with the Joneses. Moreover, most Hutterites marry for keeps; since 1875 there has been only one Hutterite divorce...
Public Enemy and Little Caesarare gems of toughness. James Cagney and Edward Robinson attack the problem of being mean and shiftless cancers on the social body with little reserve and less delicacy. Instead, they set patterns of tough-man acting that have haunted their subsequent careers. Cagney is the cocky bantam hoodlum, swaggering and posturing, with words dropping from the side of his mouth in chunks and gushes. His favorite stance is with one hand grasping a terrified speak-easy proprietor by the shirt front while two fingers of the other hand are poised to jab out stricken eyes. Robinson...