Word: glum
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Nixon dined early with his family, who until the night before had steadfastly opposed his quitting; now there was a feeling of glum acceptance that could really not be relieved by attempts at cheerfulness. At 7:30 p.m. Nixon left the White House for a meeting with five congressional leaders in the Executive Office Building next door. For perhaps the first time in his presidency, he asked his Secret Service men not to follow him on this the last night he would occupy the historic house and its grounds. The Secret Service men complied, but to ensure his protection nonetheless...
Despite such glum uniformity, literary oddities, spectacular unsellers, and even books that are totally bananas continue to appear. Here are three of the season's riper exotics...
...proletarian soap operas, done up this time with a patina of gloss. The script was written by Alan Sillitoe (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) in what could only have been a fit of self-loathing. An unhappy employee in a cheese factory, approaching middle age and dwelling on the glum fringes of the lower middle class, recalls a teen-age romance with the ragman's daughter. She was a lustrous girl who came riding down his street on a horse, smiling in soft focus. With glistening white teeth and flowing blond hair, she lacked only a tube of Clairol...
Cruel Dilemma. Despite the glum news, the worst of the economic downturn is probably over. The March drop in industrial production was smaller than any of the previous three declines; auto sales in early April were down only about half as much as earlier in the year; the housing slump appears to be bottoming out; and U.S. industry plans heavy capital spending. Because the Arab oil embargo has ended, most economists expect real G.N.P. in the current quarter to be "flat"-that is, up or down only a trifle. While that would scarcely be an achievement to crow about...
...always, economists are making predictions anyway. The general forecast for 1974 is glum: headlong inflation and a marked slowing in production, jobs, income and profits. It all adds up to a mild recession or something close to it in the first six months, with some quickening of the economic pulse thereafter. Even this lackluster prediction is hedged with qualifications because, as the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. circumspectly notes: "The range of downside possibilities in the coming year is a good deal wider than it has been in a long, long time...