Word: suburbias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...those days when I had to go into the office, I would run right out to my car at 4:30 or five, race on to the freeway, race on home to suburbia. The Motor City remained a mystery...
...with a new national prominence, Meyer expanded his interests and moved full steam into the excesses and perversions of modern suburbia. In the new film everyone drives a Rolls Royce, wears well-coordinated clothes, and sits in livingrooms with impressive views. But along with Meyer's new ambience his characters have lost some of their old verve. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls lacks Meyer's notoriously tantalizing abandon. Disappointingly he has acquired serious pretentions...
...Suburbia has long had a special place in American social mythology. Its chroniclers in fiction are John Cheever and Peter De Vries, its poet laureate Phyllis McGinley. The $50,000 split level is its castle, the barbecue chef its master of the revels, the station wagon its chariot, the 8:03 or the clogged expressway its cup of doom. Few modern Americans feel much nostalgia for the farm or the small town, and most now find the once glittering big cities tarnished with decay. The pull of the suburb has been so strong that suburbanites are becoming the most numerous...
With that many Americans in the suburbs, the myth has shattered in diversity. Suburbia is something more than the stereotype of buttoned-down Wasp commuters and wives who slurp "tee many martoonis" at the country club. "Gary is as much a suburb of Chicago as Evanston," says Political Analyst Richard Scammon. The suburbs have become increasingly heterogeneous with the influx of blue-collar workers who now have middle-class incomes and attitudes. As Scammon puts it: "Workers now aren't concerned about Taft-Hartley; they're concerned about crabgrass." Along with crabgrass, ironically, come many of the problems...
...like a clenched fist at a garden party. Discreet ads presented their accustomed celebration of the good life. Rolls-Royces at $31,600. Bracelets at $1,200 each ("Two will give you a beautiful necklace"). The cartoons included the customary chuckle at suburbia. White space set off John Updike's latest four-line poem, "Upon Shaving Off One's Beard." But leading off last week's "Talk of the Town" section, with Eustace Tilley presiding at the top of the page as usual, was the sternest editorial The New Yorker has ever...