Word: wryness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Wryness was his real profession; by the 1950s, when he was editing Punch, it was clear that Muggeridge was one of the saltiest essayists of his time. He went public on English television, as a panelist of dependable perversity. Then he surprised his audience with a book called Jesus Rediscovered (1969), and it became known that-contrariness to the contrary-he was a practicing Christian...
This reduction of ideas to platitudes, this perpetual emotional filibuster relying on psychic sensationalism and insights as adaptable and obvious as children's blocks that are numbered and lettered, is depicted, on the whole, with wryness. The warning lies beneath the mockery...
That satisfying fantasy is sadly absent from Condominium-and so is the author's customary wryness. In its place is a self-righteousness that bombinates at needless length on environmental matters, foolishness and greed...
...songs - or rather those tossed out of such shows as Candide, On the Town, Wonderful Town and West Side Story - a bittersweet delight. Less than topnotch though they are, the songs brim with confidence and fun. So does the patter, which harks back to the days when sophistication meant wryness and a wise crack was communication. The cast communicates by singing and dancing, and at least two of them - Patricia Elliott and Janie Sell - should immediately have their snap and crackle popped into a real musical...
...tribute Dame Sibyl exacted from the islanders included the traditional tenth sheaf of all cereals harvested and a live chicken each year as tax on every kitchen chimney on her tenants' houses. Even so, she observed with her usual wryness, "they only give me the thinnest and oldest." Other seigneurial privileges included the right to keep bitches, forbidden to the Sarkese for fear that a proliferation of dogs might drive sheep over the island's 300-ft. cliffs into the English Channel. That noble prerogative caused one of the rare Sark rebellions against Dame Sibyl's authority...