Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...from affecting bankerly reserve, Miller roars with laughter at his own often corn-pone jokes, some directed at the august but arcane institution that he heads. He has invented a mythical poll in which 23% of the U.S. population thought the Federal Reserve was an Indian reservation, 26% judged it to be a wildlife preserve and 51% identified it as a brand of whisky. Most important, he speaks almost garrulously in tones of unabashed can-do optimism. The nation, he insists, can bring down its frightening rate of inflation without suffering another recession?indeed, while working toward a "model economy...
...were wiped out or dispersed. Yet they live. Several times Aaron toys with the notion that time is a book in which the dead exist on pages sim ply not legible to the living. Singer's books reverse this concept: they are time, lovingly preserved and animated by laughter and wisdom...
...country ballad about a truckstop girl "with far away eyes" in Bakersfield, California. Jagger's satire of radio preachers is particularly humorous. The album closes with "Shattered," a wierd soliloquy on the perils of New York, which Jagger talks-sings over a murky riff. Jagger sums up life as "laughter, joy and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex," and gloats ironically, "Look at me, I been shattered...
...abrasive and bumptious, often irritating Capitol Hill Pooh-Bahs, and some White House aides, whose help he needs most. Yet a smile usually plays at the edges of his mouth, and his deep laughter is disarming. If he lacks compassion for his overworked aides, cursing their failures, they at least know he pushes himself even harder. And only a few cynical civil servants claim that his passion for publicity shows that a desire for self-promotion overrides his genuine concern for society's vulnerable children, the aged and the handicapped, whom his department is pledged to help...
Given the speed with which Oxford anthologies become holy writ, Amis' peculiarities are regrettable. It is impossible, though, to pull a long face at his collection. The poems he assembles are pleasing, instructive and full of laughter. Even the index of first lines is surreally madcap. Take the sad little story told in the first five...