Word: causticity
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Women eclipse men in the book. Beautiful, flighty, intelligent, caustic, alcoholic, wily, unlovable, they are countless things, but never boring. Most male characters are secondary and not fully developed. The few male protagonists are consistently weaker--Doctor Zamora flees when he can't face his life. Carter, a college professor, is maddeningly passive in "His Women" and makes up with his ex-wife because he doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's alone. Adams smartly refuses to offer tidy explanations at the end of each story. The characters drives are ultimately a mystery. When...
...Women eclipse men in the book. Beautiful, flighty, intelligent, caustic, alcoholic, wily, unlovable, they are countless things, but never boring.Most male characters are secondary and not fully developed. The few male protagonists are consistently weaker--Doctor Zamora flees when he can't face his life. Carter, a college professor, is maddeningly passive in "His Women" and makes up with his ex-wife because he doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's alone. Adams smartly refuses to offer tidy explanations at the end of each story. The characters' drives are ultimately a mystery. When the book...
...Zippergate burnout? Then read--in fact, buy--this brisk, witty, cheerfully dour screed by Shearer, the radio host (Le Show), protean voice (The Simpsons) and hidden national treasure of political common sense. Analyzing the hatred some people have for Clinton, Shearer ladles blame and caustic wit on the President, his G.O.P. posse and the moralizing TV newsies with their "hideously bad acting." It's a smart challenge to lazy thinking. Along with another acerb little volume, Gore Vidal's The American Presidency, it can be taken as an ideal chaser to the recent binge of Monicaholism. Hemlock, anyone...
...Offspring is a best-selling punk band, but it isn't a great one: the group lacks the caustic poetry of Nirvana, the righteous snarl of Rancid and the amiable snottiness of Green Day. In its new album the Offspring attempts to make a virtue of its creative limitations: the songs on Americana are basic and direct, and a few of the tracks, including The Kids Aren't Alright, have a brutal appeal. But the band's weakness for cheap laughs soon grows tiresome--there's even a punk-rock parody of the easily mocked standard Feelings. For a group...
...time when sugared breakfast cereals could still claim to provide an ideal start to the perfect day, and when mushy canned peas nestled alongside a piece of fat-marbled beef represented a healthy diet. Though Burnett's corporate talismans endure, they occupy a world where consumers are increasingly caustic about the products that they purchase. The effort by marketers to capitalize on the cynical mind-set of an mtv generation has overwhelmed the quest for universal human archetypes. Jadedness and sarcasm are becoming the dominant argot of advertising...