Word: outdo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Devotees waited 17 years for the author to outdo his apocalyptic Gravity's Rainbow (1973). What they got instead was a kinder, gentler Pynchon. This saga of wilting '60s flower children, circa 1984, on the lam from federal narcs, displays much of the author's old virtuosity: stunning erudition and terminal paranoia coupled with the hard-edged loopiness of cartoons. That is not surprising; the happy ending...
Whatever heavy metal can do to provoke censure, rap can outdo. Whereas metal is mostly suggestive, this urban-black music is often politically or sexually explicit. N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitude) won an admonishing letter from the FBI for their song FTha Police, in which the singer warns the ghetto's occupying force: "Ice Cube will swarm/ On any m f in a blue uniform . . ./ A young nigger on the warpath,/ And when I finish it's gonna be a bloodbath." Another group, Public Enemy, has been charged with anti-Semitism in their lyrics and statements to the press. But their...