Word: causticity
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Richard Dooling is impartially derisive in his caustic second novel, White Man's Grave (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 386 pages; $22). He chucks a custard pie at every face that shows itself. There's Randall Killigan, an Indianapolis attorney who glories in the dismemberment allowed by bankruptcy law: the wrenching of great financial chunks from the carcasses of not-quite-dead companies. And there's young Boone Westfall, newly employed to reject legitimate claims at his father's sleazy insurance company. "Why do you think they call it work?" Dad asks, when Boone objects that cheating widows and orphans is tedious...
While the quotes were obviously the products of a jealous columnist's imagination, I get the distinct feeling that most of the free world was rolling over with laughter at the caustic comments about my home state...
...cusp of 40, Costello shakes off the cobwebs with Brutal Youth, a collection of 15 sinewy songs that marks his , reunion with the Attractions, the crack band that backed him on some of his best work of the '70s and '80s. Boisterous and piercing, Brutal Youth moves nimbly from caustic rock to hushed ballads, at times recapturing the brilliance of Costello's best days. "The twitching impulse is to speak your mind," he sneers on All the Rage. "I'll lend you my microscope, and maybe you'll find it." And on 20% Amnesia he lambastes the corrupt calculus...
...across the sea; they are foreign to Judaism," he said. "To him and to those like him we say: You are not part of the community of Israel..You are an errant weed...Judaism spits you out...You are a shame to Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism." His caustic words could hardly have been stronger...
...same lines of his other films, "Life is Sweet," "Nuts in May" and "Abigail's Party," Mike Leigh his created a minor masterpiece with his rich-black comedy of the working class in London, "Naked." The beauty of Leigh's newest film is lodged firmly in the brilliantly caustic characters he has created...