Word: freshet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Baby boomers have traditionally wanted it all, so why not eternal youth? As the "gray-by boomers" cross the 50-year line in record numbers, they are lapping up a freshet of books about how to turn back the clock. Life expectancy in the U.S. is at an all-time high. A newborn boy can expect to reach 73.4 years, and a newborn girl 79.3. But extensions of the average life span apparently just make us greedy for a longer, healthier life. That's where fountain-of-youth books come in. Depending upon the author, they promise to help...
Desperation and The Regulators will bring a return to sturdier, more surefire thrills: heaps and heaps of gore (the words rill and freshet crop up in relation to hemorrhaging), ambiguous but decidedly malevolent supernatural powers, and cataclysmic battles between good and ultimate evil. (Is there any other kind in horror novels?) Both books feature a broken-down writer whose output has dwindled from his glory days--one imagines that might be a scary thought for King. But here's an even scarier idea for a novel: What about a writer who couldn't stop writing--ever...
...half of whose million-dollar annual budget is underwritten by the Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc., the Louisville-based health-care company) is not exactly a secret. "What we've tried to be," says Jon Jory, the ATL's guiding light for 27 years, "is a freshet for the American repertoire." Among the 224 new plays in the fest's 20 years are two Pulitzer Prize winners, The Gin Game and Crimes of the Heart, as well as Agnes of God, Extremities and off-Broadway's current Below the Belt. And however perilous the playwright...
...THOSE FRETFUL ABOUT THE SUBLIteracy of the MTV generation, a freshet of hope comes with the annual YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL, which has drawn on thousands of writers 18 and younger and given the best an off-Broadway showcase. This year's cleverest premise comes from Aurorae Khoo. Her rap poem The P.C. (for politically correct) Laundromat substitutes for the melting pot the metaphor of the washing machine, where whites and colors fare best when separate. Joanna Norland's Mothers Have Nine Lives wryly contrasts the joys of playing mommy as a child with the discontents of the real thing...
Carothers is not alone. Suddenly, a freshet of environmental publications -- some old, like Greenpeace, some new -- is striving for a mainstream audience, feeding on the growing awareness of a planetary threat. "The world is going to hell, and people are reading about soap operas," scolds Doug Moss, founder of E, a year-old bimonthly (circ. 75,000), who sees his competition as "fluff magazines that I wish would go away." New titles like Garbage, Buzzworm and Design Spirit -- all aimed at general readers -- have joined Audubon, Mother Earth News and other more established journals that have recently increased their emphasis...