Word: sordidity
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this Caesar is worth six of Marius." Caesar went off to soldier in Asia, at 18, and won both honor and disgrace. For saving the life of a fellow soldier in combat, he was decorated with the cherished Civic Crown. Flawless in courage, he also showed a streak of sordid opportunism...
Everybody knew Frankie-in a way. James D. Norris, millionaire president of the International Boxing Club-which is the heart, pocketbook and sordid soul of American prize fighting-had known him for 20 years. Used to dunk doughnuts with him, as a matter of fact. What did Frankie do for a living? Well, Jim Norris wouldn't know about that. They were just sort of social friends...
...less lyrical than it is sensual, Pam and The Groper's love-making has a vernal, childlike candor about it that soars above the sordid. Pam's pregnancy and a call from the draft board break the spell but weld the couple in marriage and newfound maturity. Next of kin in mood, manner and appeal to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, The Young Lovers uses a breezy class-of-'55 lingo to shine up the ancient story of boy-mates-girl. Author Halevy, a 35-year-old New Yorker, scores his first...
...noses of classical casts with red paint, took to washing his face in film developer. He also made himself a first-rate draftsman and a master of watercolor. Thus equipped, he took to wandering like a self-propelled vacuum cleaner into ugly corners of the everyday world, sucking up sordid impressions to belch out as nightmare pictures. Burra's brush can turn a gin mill into an outpost of hell, a whore into a rapacious owl, a bottle into an imp with one malignant eye peering from the lip. Now a birdlike, tattered little man of 50, Burra rivals...
...gutters of Memphis." Even though many of these gruesome promises are designed merely to discourage radical de-segregation, some Southerners may feel pride-bound to fulfill their rash avowals. Particularly in rural areas, where Negroes compete for jobs directly with whites; where illiteracy, bigotry, and violence combine in a sordid tangle, racist strife seems likely as integration approaches. Yet these social experts could point to Baltimore and Washington as examples of successful rapid integration. They cited numorous cases in labor and military de-segregation where threats of violence dissolved into racial harmony, once integration became a fact. These experts have...