Word: witless
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...work between the covers is not far above this level. With the exception of a clever dig at the Gen. Ed. Program's humanities courses, drawn by E. Wentworth, the cartoons are utterly witless. Two vignettes, one of a Roman chariot and one of a spotted cat, are the only really amusing drawings in the issue. The cat is Updike...
...terrorized with the realization that everything in the world was thick. My fingers were sausages. My tongue was a tennis ball. My lips swelled grotesquely on the mouth grip. The air was syrup. The water jelled around me as though I were smothered in aspic. I hung witless on the rope. Standing aside was a smiling, jaunty man, my second self, perfectly self-contained, grinning sardonically at the wretched diver. [He] ordered that I unloose the rope and go on down...
...French; and a pantomime, Baptiste, requiring no French at all. A mannered 18th-century mixup, Les Fausses Confidences was all ambitious mothers and wily servants, dissembling lovers and trumped-up letters. But in an elegantly stylized production, the play seemed almost to be danced. Done so lightly, even its witless deceptions had an air of wit. Madeleine Renaud made an exquisite widow; Barrault, playing an agile valet, had about him a touch of quicksilver, of Mercury himself. To enjoy the production it was less necessary to understand French than to respond to style...
...their character tempered by wresting a living from their bleak island and the sea around it, the Newfies have developed into an independent, hardworking, happy breed. Their wit and individuality show strongly in their geographic names. Newfoundland places are called Happy Adventure, Come By Chance, Heart's Delight, Witless Bay, Cuckold's Cove, Naked Woman Point and Horse Chops. Humor and theology are neatly blended in the fact that a harbor with a broad, easy entrance is called Hell's Mouth; another that is narrow and difficult is named Big Paradise...
Last week a wave of shock ads ("No one under 16 will be admitted") ushered the claptrap into Manhattan. New York critics brushed the picture off with amused disdain. Whether taken as an inept counterfeit of Hollywood gangster movies or a witless parody, No Orchids is so ludicrous that its thugs' thinly disguised British accents seem minor imperfections...