Word: smug
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...contemporary local interest to Boston readers is the comment upon the suppression in Boston by a "smug" society of an early edition of "Leaves of Grass" Speaking of this society Mr. Morris has this to say: "They had probably understood nothing of the text but those passages which they alleged to be objectionable. Thus the guest of Emerson and Sanborn and the finest and purest men and women of Boston and Concord, the friend of Tennyson and Longfellow, and of Mrs. Gilchrist was found unclean by an anonymous group who were unqualified to receive the rich message he brought them...
...boorish editor. His nostrum proves rather unpalatable, for the lover she chooses is too torrid for a woman acclimated to a temperate zone. Then too, her husband is rather unpleasant about the liaison, so she finally dashes off to Austria with the doctor. Walter Connolly is excellent as the smug, foolish husband, but Henry Hull's persistently fortissimo rendition of the other man frays the nerves and should detract from his reputation...
There was a time when one could laugh at the smug hypocrisy of the Boston censors, but it becomes almost necessary to "view with alarm" a movement which threatens to wipe out the lawful study of a whole field of literature. In the welter of material which has appeared on the subject vilifying the censors, the one thing that has been overlooked is the possibility of disclosing an insidious publishers lobby. All books printed in a foreign language are admitted duty free into the country and they may sometimes compete with American publications and thus reduce the per'capita spendings...
...Time out!" Gentlemen! Life subscriptions, indeed! to make TIME smug and fat, complacent and self-satisfied. Already is there the trace of complaisance, of self-satisfaction, in its columns as indicated verily by this discussion...
...social lesson is thus outmoded. If the author were to have lectured in the U. S. on the incompatibility of nobles and peasants, few would pay to attend. It is as a psychologist, as the creator of the shrewd Generalin, the love-loving Fraulein Bork, the prurient children, the smug Baron, the fearfully respectable Baroness, highly-principled Hans, class-bound Frau Grill, that Author Keyserling excites greatest admiration...