Word: vulgarisms
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...Hamlet is a "crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless work," complained the novelist. Man and Superman, he wrote to George Bernard Shaw, is not "sufficiently serious." The music of Beethoven, Schumann and Berlioz, he told Tchaikovsky, has "an artificial style-striving for the unexpected." The critic was Count Leo Tolstoy, and these and other remarks appear in two volumes of Tolstoy's Letters (Scribners; $35), the first comprehensive translation into English of the Russian writer's prolific correspondence. In notes to friends and fellow authors like I.S. Turgenev, Maxim Gorky, H.G. Wells and Rainer Maria Rilke, Tolstoy also takes...
...intention in both cases is to demonstrate that cops are human too - vulgar, shady, resentful of authority, un feeling at precisely those moments when they need to show some sensitivity. But, of course, there is more to being human than that, and the interrelated short sto ries of the book had about them the air of artless anecdote. They were tales that might have been funny if you'd been there, but that turned flat and ugly in the retelling...
...scarlet dragoon's uniform, he preens before a mirror and loftily mouths stanzas from Byron. Playing the highborn gentleman, though fooling no one, Con charges over the countryside on a thoroughbred mare while reducing his daughter to a barroom slavey. He sneers at the Yankees as vulgar traders while owing them money and enjoying none of their trade...
...communicate perfectly through the translator, who seems to bring out the best in both of them. Suddenly, for no reason, the old translator is replaced by a repulsive, fat man who speaks in broken English. At their next meeting, the American finds the woman completely changed She is vulgar and materialistic--"How many car do you have?," she asks, "How many houses...
Caroline attracts the very particular Elgin by looking aristocratic, reading French novels and expressing an affinity for the symphony, all of which somehow set her apart from the other girls on campus whom Elgin finds so vulgar and vapid. Caroline confesses her loneliness; Elgin decides this means she is looking for a meaningful relationship. He romantically believes the two of them will transcend the mundaneness of life. Then they discover...