Word: fecklessness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...question of how the larger ground is prepared, meaning the psychological terrain that might make a kid capable of killing, the professionals share the assumptions of most parents. These days Mom and Dad are not always home much. The extended family of the past is gone. A feckless popular culture has moved into the vacuum...
...19th century novel, there are many fascinating exfoliations. All of Carey's major characters come equipped with vivid childhoods--not just Maggs, thrown on a Thames mud flat as an infant and adopted in order to be trained as a thief, or Oates, humiliated and impoverished young by a feckless father. There is also Mercy Larkin, who befriends Maggs and who was sent into prostitution when barely more than a child by her own mother...
...life that can be made to look dashing--you know, the trench-coated stand-upper with the rubble of some dreadful, war-torn landscape stretching out behind the minor media star. It's also a life that can begin to seem feckless--you know, the endless trafficking in scenes of human misery that, no matter how widely they are broadcast, do nothing to halt the flow of tragedy...
...began decorously enough, given the indecorous business at hand. In a telephone (naturally) press conference, AT&T outside director Walter Elisha patted company president John Walter on the back for having made "important contributions" to the feckless phone company. Then Elisha stuck the knife in: "The board has decided it will not elect him CEO...therefore, John has decided to leave the company...
Glad, he thinks, to be rid of his strict mother and living a largely undisciplined life with his feckless father, Ellroy grows addicted to crime stories: "Every book I read was a twisted homage to her. Every mystery solved was my love for her in ellipses." When his father dies, the still underage son goes into a long tailspin: alcohol, drugs, sleeping in public parks, petty burglaries, time in county jails. Miraculously, he rights himself and becomes a published writer. "I was hot to ascend," he says. "Ascension meant two things. I had to write a great crime novel...