Word: cleverness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...clever performer and a witty lyricist, the man behind the Mountain Goats on his own terms stands as a giant of the bedroom-music scene. No matter that his following bears more resemblance to a secret club than music fans. Or that his set list is a conglomeration of travel itineraries and Latin aphorisms. With a broad smile and a warm hello, the club president is open and welcoming, and his concerts are large circles of friends who are all too eager to invite you into their slightly abnormal lives...
...moral of this funny and acerbic family novel is, Don't give your clever eight-year-old anything to write about. Do not twit, tease, appall, amuse, behave weirdly in the presence of, or otherwise give fertile novelistic material to, the sort of shrewd moppet who may someday find a publisher...
...course, a clever person in this situation can find one thing to complain about: things have gotten too placid, too settled, too nice. Aren't we really happiest in times of great conflict and danger? The novelist Walker Percy raised this point in his essays years ago. "Why," he asked, "is [a] man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo during a hurricane?" Percy discussed the estrangement of the commuter passing through New Jersey: his needs are entirely satisfied, but he feels bad. "The Bomb would seem to be sufficient reason...
Resolute cynics may roll their eyes and conclude that David Ignatius' clever and unsettling thriller A Firing Offense (Random House; 333 pages; $23) is merely an elaborate dance of the oxymorons. Its plot, after all, places military intelligence, the archetype of self-contradictions, in opposition to another giggle inducer, journalistic ethics...
...more staging. The show starts out in high gear with an infectiously cynical ode to self-interest (Use What You Got), sung by hustler-narrator Jojo (the excellent Sam Harris), and keeps topping itself. Lillias White, as an over-the-hill hooker, brings vivacity and soul to Gasman's clever lyrics ("I'm getting too old/ For the oldest profession"), and the driving, up-tempo number Why Don't They Leave Us Alone turns the hookers and pimps into the most inspired chorus line in town. The Life may, in truth, be just another kind of Broadway hustle, but when...