Word: scum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...abortion, gun control and especially taxes. "The President has been taking heat on Quayle for so long that if he dropped him now, the political damage would be 10 times worse than it was on taxes," says a senior Republican strategist. "The President would look like just another scum politician, and one of the main things he has going for him is that the public sees him as more honorable and principled than that...
...forewarned: Scum is no trashy mini-series plot waiting for the right network scriptwriter and a corporate sponsor. Like the characters it explores, the book's outward simplicity is deceptive. Singer's genius--his depiction of moral decay--is immensely complex and not fully apparent until the book's last explosive pages...
...Scum begins in Warsaw. Max Barabander is a godless, physically impressive, womanizing ex-convict whose mid-life crisis leads him to abandon respectability in Argentina for the impoverished streets of his youth. At 47, his life has been completely disrupted. Max's only son has died, and he and his wife Rochelle find themselves haunted by a newly-discovered consciousness of their own frailty...
Accordingly, impotence is what Scum is all about. As Singer writes, "Max knew that he had really come to Poland looking for a girlfriend." Even though there are a variety of other "matters to settle," including visiting his parents' graves in the country to repent for having abandoned them without a word, the only thing that Max seems to pay any attention to in Poland...
...quaint world of Scum--complete with its filthy streets and tortured inhabitants--is gone. But Singer, by capturing the mood of 1906 working-class Warsaw life and adding a dimension to the narrative, elevates this book from a mere sex-riddled tale to a significant social commentary...