Word: curmudgeoned
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...eldest sister, Esther Crampton (Maureen O'Sullivan), lives down the road with David (Gary Merrill), her elitist curmudgeon of a husband, who openly reviles her siblings and their menfolk as "morons." Naturally, each sister cuts through the Gordian knot of close relations only to find it intact - even if more loosely binding. However, Homer amusingly severs his umbilical cord...
...until we learn that the Soviet grain crop has failed almost completely because the red bureaucracy fouled up. The folks in the Zil limousines, especially the Brezhnev-clone Soviet premier, Maxim Rudin, are not amused, and Rudin's Kremlin rivals want to use the crisis to get the old curmudgeon bounced. Back in Washington, Bill Matthews and Assistant for National Security Affairs, Stanislaw (read Zbigniew) Poklewski, and Secretary of State David (read Cyrus) Lawrence want to use the shortage to wring concessions out of the Russians...
When he was eleven, the tribe moved to an apartment just off Baltimore's Union Square, where that famous curmudgeon H.L. Mencken lived. The future "Observer" satirist was unaware of that, though today he suspects that Mencken was the elderly gentleman who one day called the cops to chase Baker and some fellow ballplayers out of the square. In high school, young Russell was well liked, athletic (he ran the quarter mile) and showed promise as a humorist with a senior-year essay...
Amis deftly exploits the comic possibilities of Jake's ordeal, but the author has more on his mind, perhaps too much more, than comedy alone. Jake is a reactionary curmudgeon, and his view rules the novel. He may have a problem, but society is sick. He rejects his psychiatrist's diagnosis of repressions: "I was doing fine when things really were repressive, if they ever were, it's only since they've become, oh, permissive that I've had trouble." In the end, Jake issues a jeremiad against his own treatment and therapy in general...
...weigh an amendment requiring the Federal Government to operate on a balanced budget. Limits on state and local spending have been enacted in three states (Colorado, New Jersey and Tennessee), and efforts to clamp on similar lids are under way in 19 others. And Howard Jarvis, the crusty curmudgeon who spearheaded the California tax revolt, has already been asked to carry his crusade to 40 states...