Word: cheerless
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Only 120 miles north of Seoul lies another world. There, from a drab, cheerless capital, the self-proclaimed "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung presides over an Orwellian state where the radios have dials that cannot be tuned and loudspeakers broadcast propaganda 20 hours a day into every home. Such totalitarianism is fast becoming extinct everywhere else in the world, but Kim not only survives, he is virtually worshiped by his people...
...unfolding drama framed the extremes of modern Mormon life. Utah lures skiers to the slopes of its Wasatch Mountains, but the state is also home to Fundamentalists who find the 20th century anathema. About 20 miles northeast of the ski resort of Alta, the Singer clan nursed its cheerless fantasies. Founded by John Singer, an American-born TV repairman who spent his formative years in Nazi Germany, the family first ran afoul of the law when Singer pulled his children from school to shield them from the influence of drugs and racial integration. His continued defiance...
Despite its cheerless title, More Die of Heartbreak is a consistently funny variation on the theme of intellectual haplessness. Its narrator, Kenneth Trachtenberg, 35, is an assistant professor of Russian literature at a university in an unnamed "Rustbelt metropolis" in the Midwest. Raised in Paris by expatriate American parents, Kenneth has come back to the U.S. to be near his maternal uncle Benn Crader, a man in his 50s and an eminent botanist, revered by fellow specialists for his work on Arctic lichens. Kenneth's obsession with Benn stems from a conviction that "you have no reason to exist unless...
...Marcos plundering seems ultimately a cheerless affair, covert though sometimes ostentatious, avaricious though often prodigal. Christ said, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Marcos did not wish to wait. He turned Christianity upside down. He took nourishment from the mouths of the poor and transformed it into his treasure on earth. Such venality is not a matter of either Freud or metaphysics. It is just a brutal habit, the crocodile reflex of a man too long in power. It is a subdivision...
Faced with so cheerless a life, some Iranians have been staging something of a cultural revolution within their own homes. The focus of this underground world is that icon of blithe energy, Michael Jackson. On the black market in Tehran, his cassettes fetch up to $50, and videotapes of the Gloved One rent for up to $100 a night. Many houses regularly become covert discos. In response, detachments of Islamic Guards, acting on informers' tips, have been raiding homes and confiscating tapes. The government apparently fears that the Jackson clubs could influence Iranian youth to turn against the regime...