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...rundown U.S. economy sent discouraging new signals last week that it cannot shake the blahs. In one major sign of weakness, a virtual Who's Who of blue-chip companies reported huge losses or falling profits for the third quarter of this year. Citicorp lost $885 million largely because of red ink at its Quotron stock-reporting service and costs stemming from the layoff of 5,000 workers earlier this year. The largest U.S. banking firm said it would suspend its dividend and dismiss several thousand more workers. Among manufacturers, IBM said slumping sales caused its profits to plunge...
McClure writes rich, vigorous prose, full of snarky humor but never in a way that undercuts the deadly drive of the narrative. And he is as sadly witty about individuals as about their troubled nation. Here is Kramer in The Song Dog, surveying the wares at a rundown country store: "On the crowded shelf of cigarettes and pipe tobacco, he saw, for the first time in years, the little cotton bags of shag his father had smoked to excess, so crude it came complete with tobacco stalks. Good stuff, that shag: it had given the old bastard the long, lingering...
...kills the writer. Plagiarism is usually too squalid and minor to take a part in tragedy; maybe that was the suicide's true shame, the grubbiness. Plagiarism proclaims no majestic flaw of character but a trait, pathetic, that makes you turn aside in embarrassment. It belongs to the same rundown neighborhood as obscene phone calls or shoplifting...
...Honolulu neighborhood is seedy, the building rundown and the second-story room bleak. When a drug user comes in, drops a dirty needle into a plastic bucket and receives a fresh sterile syringe and needle in exchange, no name is given, no questions are asked. This is the start of the nation's first state- approved program for providing addicts with clean needles in the hope of curtailing the spread of AIDS. Under the two-year pilot project, an addict can swap a used needle for a new one, supplied by the nonprofit Life Foundation, up to five times...
Principal Nora Brandt, elected by the Bryan faculty to lead them in restructuring, began with the basics, repainting the rundown stucco building and starting a "Bryan Pride" campaign to boost children's self-image and team spirit. To pave the way for improvement, she hired several forceful, imaginative teachers. Today literacy is paramount at Bryan, where the student body is one-third white, one-third black and one-third Hispanic. Teachers stress writing and the classics. Each month 400 children are bused to the Dade County Public Library; parents receive a "reading tips" newsletter...