Word: clutter
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...insight, sympathy and exactitude. The trouble was, he could not find the right topic. Then one day in 1959, he was leafing through the New York Times when he noticed a headline, EISENHOWER APPOINTEE SLAIN. He read the story of the senseless killing of Wheat Farmer Herbert Clutter and his family, and he suddenly realized that he had his theme. Why not do a crime from beginning to end? "A crime would not date, and it would provide an enormous range of characters...
Hardly was the Clutter family funeral over when Capote arrived in Holcomb, Kans., scene of the crime. He stayed for six months and immersed himself in the life of the community. With his light, lisping voice and his blue Jaguar, he looked out of place in that flat corner of the Middle West, but he made friends easily. "He was just as quick as any man afoot," says Mrs. Myrtle Clare, a onetime postmistress, who figures briefly in his story. "Just like a flash of lightning, he was here, there, everywhere." The result of all Capote's footwork...
...Pride. Even some of the daring innovations seem questionable. For instance, all secretaries are given the interior glass walls; officials are relegated to the windowless exterior spaces. The concrete ramps (a favorite Le Corbusier device) and walkways that frame the central plaza add an unwanted clutter. The central, mushroomlike structure is shaped to give the mayor a sumptuous office and the city council an imposing, showcase chamber. But it tapers underneath, around the supporting stem, to fairly unusable space that is filled mainly with a blue-broadloom-covered circular staircase adorned with padded horsehair railings. "I guess...
...Clutter of Gimmicks. Sunbeam and its competitors do much of this business in products that were unknown five years ago. Growing affluence and the trend to easier living have stimulated demand for almost everything electric, from cradle rockers to foot warmers. Small appliances also sell well because, unlike a refrigerator or a dishwasher, most are in the $25-and-under price range and are often bought on impulse. The market is still cluttered with many gimmicks (electric whisk brooms and wastepaper baskets), but it has also made many onetime luxuries commonplace. Sales of ice crushers and combination electric knife sharpener...
Real Romance. Bad Neuenahr is typical because gambling, once considered a failing of the decadent aristocracy, has throughout Europe today become awesomely respectable, middle-class-and big. In Monaco, camera-toting tourists just off tour buses from Brussels and Amsterdam clutter up the Grand Casino, while serious Monégasque students of chance clang away at the one-armed bandits lined up across the street from the elegant Hotel de Paris. In France, the postwar development of le tierce, a combination racing bet and lottery, which attracts 3,000,000 Frenchmen every Sunday, has made horse-track betting the country...