Word: known
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...earnest plonkers had written this clumsy, lively, thoroughly entertaining family saga of war and romance, no reader would have puzzled over deep currents that seem unaccountably shallow. Anthony Burgess, however, is one of literature's certified mandarins, known as an explicator of Ulysses (Re Joyce), a postapocalyptic moralist (A Clockwork Orange), and a scholar showily at home in a double handful of ancient and modern languages. He wigwags strenuously at the outset of this new novel that primal, mythic stuff is ahead -- ancient tales threading through the dark, tribal roots of 20th century bloody-mindedness...
...CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL. Alan Ayckbourn, known as Britain's Neil Simon for his send-ups of suburbia, is at his shrewdest in this backstage tale of amateur theatricals, at Washington's Arena Stage...
...weeks that followed, there was an intense debate at the frat house. Everyone liked Ron and agreed that he would make a good member, but they worried about what it would mean for the fraternity. Brown said little, though he let it be known that he was unwilling to finesse the issue by accepting house privileges without full membership. Finally, the fraternity brothers rallied around and initiated him. As a result, the national headquarters of Sigma Phi revoked the chapter's charter. Middlebury responded by barring any fraternity with racial barriers. Eventually, all the college's fraternities repealed their exclusionary...
...Watch Saturday-morning television, and you'll see all these huge, abnormally muscled beings on cartoons and kids' programming," notes Chicago osteopath Bob Goldman. "Conan and Rambo are the heroes." So are sports stars, some of whom -- like Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson and Seattle Seahawk linebacker Brian Bosworth -- are known to have taken the steroid shortcut. Scrawny youngsters, some only 13, eagerly pay between $50 and $400 to black-market dealers for a six-to-13-week cycle of pills and injectables that could turn them into Hulk Hogans. "It takes years to build up a body like that," brags...
Just as worrisome is the threat to mental health. Drug users are prone to moodiness, depression, irritability and what are known as "roid rages." Ex- user Darren Allen Chamberlain, 26, of Pasadena, Calif., describes himself as an "easygoing guy" before picking up steroids at age 16. Then he turned into a teen Terminator. "I was doing everything from being obnoxious to getting out of the car and provoking fights at intersections," he says. "I couldn't handle any kind of stress. I'd just blow. You can walk in my parents' house today and see the signs -- holes in doors...