Word: vapidly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Where he does generalize about Harvard, Boroff has a tendency to be pleasingly vapid. For instance, "students and faculty are united on one article of faith: the greatness of the Harvard idea." Not too many people would quarrel with that, but then what is "the Harvard idea?" Commenting on a certain lack of intellectual daring, Boroff says: "The trend is toward synthesis, possibly encouraged by the electric and integrative character of the General Education courses." To this reader, it would seem rather that Harvard tends to be overly analytic, despite Gen-Ed packages, but why, anyway, should synthesis mitigate zeal...
...recites a simple fact of life to him: "George, you know you're getting too old for this sort of thing-it's not good for you; you look ghastly." But Author Lessing does not play this situation for sexual repartee. Her story is a comment on vapid people who have grown incapable of the emotions that can cement a marriage or even a love affair...
Gallerygoers who approach sculpture with high seriousness were put off at first by Greco's 7-ft., posturing Bathers, nude except for a Bikini with tight, binding bra. But Greco expects spectators to chuckle at the unexpected solemnity of their plump, vapid faces-while admiring their slender-legged charms. Says he, "They are comic figures, part of our society. They have participated in life; their participation is my theme...
There are two possible explanations for the unbelievably vapid prose. Either Dr. Farnsworth is incapable of rendering his experience into prose, in which case he should not have tried, or else he has substituted words for experience, in which case he should reexamine his words...
Unfortunately, Dr. Farnsworth is not doing this. His vapid sentences are not filled with specialized terminology but with the overworked nothing-words of the contemporary Mr. Fixit. They do not embody insights which can only be expressed in technical terminology, but rather obscure insights which any intelligent educator already...