Word: mordant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the start one expects something impressive: written by a Romanian-born poet, essayist and English professor whose last novel,The Blood Countess,was a national bestseller, Messiah promises to stun the reader. The dust jacket insists that "mordant social commentary and incandescent characters" lie within. A short plot summary instantly intrigues. And so one has every reason to expect a marvel between the covers of Messiah. Unfortunately, one has just as many reasons to be disappointed...
...shows have daters or honeymooners lewdly embarrassing each other. The mud wrestling is only verbal, but it's still a tiny step from Jerry Springer--and a long way from the stellar font of quiz shows, radio's Information, Please (1938-48), hosted by Clifton Fadiman and featuring the mordant wits Fred Allen and Oscar Levant. Back then folks tuned in to meet people cleverer than they were, not more deranged; and intelligence was an attribute to flaunt, not hide like an appendix scar. Today's game shows might take their cue from another '40s radio favorite, It Pays...
...sister Cathleen calls me back from this mordant line of thinking. A boomer herself, she is a doctor in Maine. She delivered three babies on Thanksgiving Day. She attends old people all the time, watches them die and anguishes over their endgame suffering. I tell her, "The law must never be an accessory to murder." She replies, "Be careful there. Be careful. We are not talking about murder in these cases, but about compassionate care in terminal cases in which the life has already been lived and is, in fact, now over...
...busy, uninviting, but important. Heartfield's One must have a special disposition toward suicide. It illustrates the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg by the Freikorps--an event which put an end to any realistic hopes for a Communist revolution in the Weimar Republic. Heartfield lays Liebknecht's mordant head among a sea of German newspaper clippings from anti-Communist papers, subtly picturing the Freikorps in one corner. The effect is a man drowning in newsprint--a valid object of sympathy, but probably not what Heartfield intended. Although this piece is perhaps the least presentable of the exhibit...
...this the hushed lyricism of Jenny Giering's I Follow and the mordant merriment of Michael John LaChiusa's Mistress of the Senator, and you've got a collection guaranteed to make intelligent theater-music fans prick up their ears. There's only one catch: Way Back to Paradise contains scenes, arias, and even full-blown art songs. But nostalgia-hungry listeners will search in vain among these determinedly theatrical post-Sondheim musical monologues for anything resembling the straightforward, crisply turned lyrics and incisive 32-bar melodies that for decades defined American popular music at its best...