Word: meaninglessness
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...should criticism take? It should be constructive, but not in a soupy, overtolerant way, nor yet in a casual "Well, what does it matter anyhow?" sort of way. The former type is represented in New York by such as Downes of the "Times" who is one of the best meaningless-phrase-makers in the business, and the latter by such as Simon of the "New Yorker" who writes not-to-much of nothing, and writes it very well. There must be taste and standards in music as well as in other fields of art if music is to be thought...
Certainly the absence of Argentina in the democratic lineup will be sorely felt, but that is no reason for compromising with her. The State Department has indicated that it has abandoned the five-year policy of meaningless compromise with the Argentine isolationists. That policy vitiated the Havana Conference, and its application at this time, considering the tendencies of the government in power in Buenos Aires, would be no less than isolation...
...remain static. The motivating secrets with which the men enter upon the scene are still secrets when they leave, and the reader refuses to absorb the mood when he cannot understand its source. This morbid flavor of the 'twenties, without the disillusioned bitterness toward mankind which produced it, is meaningless...
...within this limitation it achieves a certain power and vitality, fully expressed by the Repertory's able cast. Life in the post-war twenties is depicted as a vortex of ever-accelerating tempo which sucks in both young and old, and crushes them in a mad whirl of meaningless activity, devoid of all values, empty of all reality. A climax is reached in the mad piano-playing of young Nicky in the second act, louder and louder as his sensitive mind is driven close to insanity by the chaotic scene that surrounds him; his solution in the third act seems...
...disintegrate in the leaves. This final unmasking reveals the dull brown tannins, which are chemically so stable that they remain till the leaf rots to powder. Unlike flower pigments, which have the vital function of attracting pollen-spreading insects and birds, autumn's colorful foliage is just a meaningless, glorious show...