Word: curmudgeonly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
...announcement that the Oakland A's had been bought by Denver Oilman Marvin Davis probably brought as much joy to the baseball Establishment as it did to Denverites. For the move signaled the departure from baseball of Oakland Owner Charles O. Finley after nearly two decades as resident curmudgeon of the national pastime. The sale-temporarily blocked last week by a federal court restraining order obtained by the Oakland Coliseum-must be okayed by ten of the American League's 14 owners. But approval should be quickly forthcoming from men who have little love for Finley...
Even with his humorous and noble style intact, Lancelot is Percy's bitterest novel, written not with the black humor of alienation but with the crotchety distemper of a curmudgeon. It does not add to Lancelot Edwarde Lamar's credibility as an existential visionary that he speaks from a private cell in a mental hospital, reflecting on his incineration of his adulterous wife and her lover on his family estate. There is a sense that Percy feels ambivalent towards a character who might be his spokesman and who might also be crazy...