Word: glumly
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Dread of aging and death, whether by illness or murder, hovers over many of Spark's characters, but that does not make the author glum. Unlike Margaret, who is criticized by her husband for liking "art to have an exalted message whereas if there was anything he hated in art, as in life, it was a sermon," Spark seems to believe that the only sensible way to consider serious questions -- religion and guilt, insanity and illumination, free will and destiny -- is with lightly lethal humor...
...this is easier said than done, especially when people are feeling glum (and when the elderly vote and preschoolers don't), so I say, spike the water...
...humbled, and the cruelty with which this was done was so efficient that 20 years later the blackballing was still the most important emotional event of his life, far weightier than marriage, fatherhood or success in the writing dodge. Or so the author tries to convince us, in glum, cheerless chapters. An ending in which Clay's daughter also comes to grief at Princeton is mawkish and clumsy...
...Brunei, import nearly all their crude. Since they rely almost entirely on export markets to fuel their growth, they remain especially sensitive to the economic well-being of their trading partners. With oil prices rising and the U.S. economy slowing down, traders in the smaller stock markets are looking glum: in Taipei, shares have plummeted 65% from their year-end high, while the Bangkok market has slipped 40% in just two weeks...
Neither centuries under Turkish and Austro-Hungarian domination nor more than four decades of communist rule have obliterated the ethnic passions that made the Balkans a synonym for fractious politics. Now, with the communist world crumbling, new instability may follow the glum quiet of the Pax Sovietica. The peril exists side by side with the opportunity for healthy change, but the current political ferment of Eastern Europe is an inherently volatile mix in which old demons -- belligerent nationalism and demagogic populism -- could win out as easily as liberal democracy...