Word: downbeatness
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When writing his steely, intensely violent mysteries, the novelist who is otherwise known as Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle, Last Summer) calls himself Ed McBain. Fans have learned that the McBain byline promises wit, shrewd plotting and downbeat realism, but also allows for great variety. His 47th and 48th books demonstrate that range. Cinderella is a gem of sting and countersting among a prostitute, a gay hairdresser, a Latin American drug king, a Mafioso, his brutal brother, and assorted innocents who get hurt. The action keeps up until the final sentence. Another Part of the City is a thriller about...
...this hoax to demonstrate how hard it is for new authors to gain an audience. She also wanted an unprejudiced response to her fiction, "to get free of that cage of associations and labels that every established writer has to learn to live inside." This may seem a rather downbeat response to a worldwide reputation, but the point is valid. Lessing's reviewers and readers, familiar with such works as The Golden Notebook and The Four-Gated City, probably do expect every book bearing her name to concern itself with feminism and politics. That is why this new novel...
...Talking Heads latest albumn, Little Creatures, is no exception. The back cover displays the group's members standing in militant poses, chests out and chins up. Ironically, their cold stances are juxtaposed with their downbeat, paisley-covered clothing. Conveying an air of easy-going neurosis, the Heads' back cover hints at a mixture of a flower child's mellowness and tense creativity...
...rare moment of levity in an otherwise dour and downbeat Franco-West German summit meeting between the two leaders. Five hours of discussion had failed to dissipate a growing malaise between Paris and Bonn, much less restore the intimate Franco-German relationship that flourished under ex- President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The current differences, over trade talks and agricultural prices, seem certain to hinder progress toward greater West European unity. More important, on the prickly issue of Star Wars and Ronald Reagan's invitation to West Europeans to join in the U.S.'s Strategic Defense...
...future economic growth, dipped .2% in December. Finally, the Labor Department said on Friday that the civilian unemployment rate rose to 7.4% in January from December's 7.2%, even though the number of Americans holding jobs reached a record 106.4 million. Economists were a little surprised at these downbeat statistics, but most are still confident that the economy has enough momentum to avoid a recession...