Word: stupidity
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Chekhov is almost painfully Russian. His characters are up to their necks in suffering and continually say such things as "How life changes, How it deceives one." They are married to stupid husbands, or not married, or about to be married to people they don't love; they have forgotten all they used to know, or else are too stupid to know anything. But never are they happy for more than one sardonic joke at a time...
...have a war against Russia before she has the atom bomb, or we will have to lie down and let them govern us." Last week, at Bloomington, Ind., Russell thought East & West might still get along together. What was necessary, he said, was for both sides to forget their "stupid imperialism...
...prevent him from becoming Madrid's court painter. Goya's paintings of the royal family were much admired, for no one dared admit that he showed them naked as the emperor in the fable of the "Emperor's New Clothes," stripped down to essence, strutting and stupid under their satins...
...economic view was as rewarding an approach to the anatomy of character itself as the now fashionable psychological approach. His young men have the assertiveness of youth itself, their vanity is perfect. His masterful or stupid middle-aged women are a special excellence, and so are his pompous fathers. Undershaft is convincing as a human being. A very vain man, Shaw was a connoisseur of vanities and his collection is not wounding or disheartening-as it is, say, in smaller writers like Maugham-largely because Shaw is warmed by the fire of a natural affinity. Only a clumsiness of plot...
...grocery business must be a good one," one of A & P's top men likes to say, "there are so many stupid people in it." John himself insists that he and George were almost the stupidest of the lot; they almost let the self-service supermarket go by without recognizing it as the biggest revolution in the food business since John's economy store...