Word: vulgarity
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SHOSTAKOVICH: KATERINA ISMAILOVA (3 LPs; Melodiya-Angel). This opera cost its composer considerable grief: shortly after he wrote it he was denounced by the Soviets for bourgeois intentions and vulgar execution. It is a brash work; at times openly satirical, at others tragically serious. The plot, based on Nikolai Leskov's story, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, tells of a frustrated wife who eventually destroys the men around her. All the characters are thoroughly unsympathetic. The recording, part of Capitol's new import of Russian phonography, is disappointing. As the wife, Niconora Andreyeva has spirited dramatic presence...
...C.l.A. was behind the abduction. Even Charles de Gaulle allowed as to how that was probably the case. Then, to the French President's chagrin, it became clear that his own police, acting in cahoots with Moroccan officials and the Parisian underworld, had engineered the whole operation. "A vulgar and minor affair," said De Gaulle in airy dismissal...
...form of dress and address. And humor passes through the most ephemeral of fashions. The concept of wit, the very word, today suggests a dated elegance. Gone is the vintage innocence, masquerading as chic, that Miss Dorothy Parker symbolized. Things are now laughed about that she would have found vulgar, if not downright indiscreet. Humor today is broad and black. Perhaps it is more human; it is certainly less artificial. Yet the suspicion mounts that behind the laughter of "alienation," there is a wide streak of sentimentality, too, just as there was behind the "cynicism" of Dorothy Parker...
...suspicions thus raised about Ed Long deepened the gloom of a Senate already embarrassed by the case of Connecticut's Tom Dodd, by the vulgar performance of the other Long, Russell, who stalled legislative proceedings for five weeks over the tax-endowed campaign-fund act, and by the scandal of Adam Clayton Powell on the other side of the Hill...
...however, the point of the article was that since the inanition of the current political scene makes participation therein unseemly and vulgar, there is a hellish need for something new -- before we all cop out. That LBJ might be displaced in the process -- or that the war might come to an end -- well, so much the better. But there are things even more important than that, one of which is the salvation of a political system which may no longer be worth fighting for. Lardner just can't see beyond LBJ or Vietnam. John Garson Research Associate...