Word: ironist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hard-boiled' means not turning away from a dead body and going into the hall to vomit. It means going into a morgue and smelling a stench that makes you want to wash your hands for days." In short, unflinching realism, a misunderstood term. Says Elmore Leonard, the macabre ironist of crime and punishment: "If I were to ever write a private-eye story, and try to make it as realistic as the stories I do write, what would he do? Private detectives don't do that much. You gather information in divorce cases, or spend a lot of time...
...confrontation between the zealot and the omelet maker (the omelet maker being the one who always insists that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs). The issue is framed exactly: animal life is forfeit to the potential gain of human life. An ironist would point out that the Wound Laboratory would put animals to death in order to perfect the human talent to make war-and that war is humanity's most dramatic bestiality. Inevitably, the idea of the Wound Laboratory received publicity, and it stirred up the fury of what is becoming...
...their sordid spin-offs in film and fiction. The oldest members of the outfit are called Mother and Father; there is a no-obscenity rule, and the favorite pastime is not poker but a demonic version of bridge. The men also share their reading. As Knott, ever the illuminating ironist, puts it, "We rip books apart so we can read them together." It is a subversive recreation. After a discussion of All Quiet on the Western Front, the group considers quitting the war at first opportunity...
...Mann managed his career as though it were the family business. Friends about to review his first novel, Buddenbrooks, a story of materialistic decline and youthful awareness, received detailed instructions from the author, who was 26. Comparisons to Dickens and the "great Russians" were recommended. About himself, the noted ironist was seldom ironical...
...voyeurism could aid his performing career in the early '70s. Always a supreme ironist and imitator, a fan of Monty Python and Dr. Strangelove, Elvis began to kid his early songs. Near the end, in the kind of Bible Belt town where he had first gained fame, Elvis even gave away expensive jewelry to win over an audience that failed to appreciate the 255-lb. monster parading as Presley...