Nevertheless, one must admit that his style is a refreshing and illuminating antidote to the
drabness and triteness in so much academic writing.
It is an experience during which "in glorious revolt from the
drabness of the city, the camper drinks in the wine of the sunset, lays his head close to fresh and smelly earth-things, and is lulled to sleep by that sweetest symphony in all the world -- the patter of raindrops on the tent roof."
He paints the strait-jacketed literary scene, the 'Establishment', and the
drabness of post-war Britain in grey hues - it is this, a sort of ubiquitous London smog, clammy and stifling, against which each author struggles.
But the
drabness, the awful
drabness, is just what you find in Kafka's stories long before Communism.
The common corridors take a step away from the usual nondescript
drabness of New York apartment buildings with custom fabric drum shade lighting and each apartment entry boasts a walnut plank panel surround.
Halpin, in "a wig both sad and lifeless" while carrying "a once vivacious bouquet of flowers long since faded to the land of sepia." Hannah Arendt spoke of the banality of evil in regard to that other mass murderer Adolph Eichmann; Patrick McCabe shows us the
drabness of insanity, for even Pat McNab's hallucinations are painfully unoriginal.
This, combined with the overall
drabness of this book means that a severe attention retention problem could occur.
NEW YORK-A world of color seems to have faded without Design Research, and some bemoan the relative
drabness in fashion.
The old grey
drabness has been completely transformed by entrepreneurship and a host of new skyscrapers is rising, just one sign of the huge investment that has been pouring in.
Consider, for example, his opening gambit in the essay on Brigitte Fassbaender: "Just as one sometimes thinks it is worth the agony of losing a train ticket, a house key, a wrist watch or whatever for the pleasure of finding it again, so it may happen that a bad night at the opera will have a redemptive pleasure in store by revealing all the more clearly the star quality of a singer who shone among the general
drabness." What a set up!
Such a character suits that explosion of allusions and references that is Western Europe today, not post-glasnost Russia and the
drabness and the stylistic confusion that has crept over its ballet.
The exuberant hues of these ornate fabrics contrast dramatically with the
drabness and poverty of the surroundings.
The secondary wealth of such leaders consists of portable works of precious metals and other rare durable materials, embodying fine craftsmanship - objects that can alleviate the
drabness of a subsistence economy, that can symbolize the magical powers of command and education at the disposal of the elite, that can be given as rewards for service to a faithful thane or samurai, and that can honor the God of Christendom (or the mandate of Heaven, or the pyramid of Tlaloc).
In Szczury (1932; "Rats") he depicted the
drabness of everyday life in the sort of small provincial town where many Polish Jews lived.