Word: shyness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Bennett was a child of the Midland slums, the son of a domineering and ambitious pawnbroker father who eventually became a fairly prosperous solicitor. Handicapped by a stammer that in childhood made him jerk epileptically and bite the air, he grew up painfully shy and covered his shyness with the show-off's mantle. He was as frugal as a ragpicker, carefully kept a record of each shilling tip, constantly worried about money...
...injury in case the plane hits sudden turbulence. The common belief that seats in the tail are safer than those up front has a little basis in fact, but the passenger can do better by sitting close to an emergency exit. Above all, he should swallow his shyness and ask questions. He should not imitate Comedian Mort Sahl's timid traveler who would "rather die than look foolish." The annals of the air are filled with stories of people who led many other passengers out of a crash simply because they had troubled to find out about emergency doors...
...over Vietnam. He's an observer not a combatant, and he feels uncomfortable if forced into the fray. So long as his name is only in the by-line, Lacouture is a forceful and persuasive critic. But when his name is shoved into the headlines, his sharpness turns to shyness, his dynamism dissolves into hesitancy...
...Burton puts it, "dance to suit yourself." Dancing to rock 'n' roll has become such a private reverie, in fact, that a partner, except in deference to custom, is not necessary. And that is its great attraction. Since couples neither touch nor even look at each other, all the shyness some men and women have about dancing?clammy hands, missing a beat, stepping on feet, etc.?is removed and, as one club owner says, "Everybody goes off into their own narcissistic...
...more. The mousy girl friend is in analysis and given to morose dissections of her emotions, ranging from jealousy of Melba to frustration about the men who get away. She has a strange preoccupation with necrophilia. When one romance collapses, the mousy girl laments that "social graces are dead, shyness is dead, chivalry is dead, game playing is dead, necking is dead, Mr. Right is dead, expectations of any kind are dead. Only the moment lives...