Word: excremention
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There is nothing subtle about the book. Every scene is played for maximum impact, culminating in Daniel's imagined re-creation of the execution: "My father snapped back and forth, cracking like a whip. A hideous smell compounded of burning flesh, excrement and urine filled the death chamber." Occasionally Doctorow overdoes his aggressiveness. There are too many stray references to "volts" and "currents," too many gory inserts about earlier methods of execution. Both detract from the starkness of the tragedy. But these are quibbles. Doctorow has produced a relatively rare commodity: a serious novel on a distasteful subject that...
Those who manage to escape could be models for Goya's Disasters of War. The lucky ones get into already overfilled tent camps that reek of caustic soda disinfectant and human excrement, and are ankle deep in filthy water from the first monsoons. Most huddle under trees or bushes trying to avoid the heavy rains. Some find cramped quarters on the verandas of now closed schoolhouses. Others near Calcutta have found large open drainpipes to live in. Around them is always the stench of garbage, polluted water, sickness and death...
...artist and teacher, I view the Andy Warhol machine with no other emotion than disgust. Although I admire Mr. Warhol's attempt to portray his environment in the indiscriminate manner of a ditto machine, I would suggest that he spend a little less time fondly fingering our cultural excrement. The concern should be with changing...
...film revolves around a middle-class family trapped in modern urban madness. No such setting would be complete these days without Elliott Gould. As Alfred, a photographer who specializes in snapshots of excrement, he is your average apathetic male set upon by a conventionally aggressive female named Patsy (Marcia Rodd). Her pursuit of Alfred is typical Feiffer: overpowering feminity frustrated by Silly Putty masculinity. Her father (Vincent Gardenia) bellows like the urban Babbitt he is while Mom amuses Alfred with pictures of her dead son. Another sibling snivels around the apartment in sexual ambiguity...
...causes and cures. One school holds that an ever-increasing population's demand for higher living standards must also create ever-increasing amounts of pollution. Unchecked population growth is thus the chief villain. Not so, says another, equally vociferous school, blaming runaway technology instead. By dumping its noxious excrement heedlessly, technological society is overwhelming nature's ability to purify itself. Last week, at a Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, four champions from both camps clashed in direct debate...