Word: vileness
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...they know dread time or place. That leaves the soul still full of grace? Better to wear Dutch cap or wad And after their debauching, use Syringe or douche away abuse, Without a sin, trusting in God, Argument on the Seventh Hill, Clarke attacks again and again with his vile...
Clarke attacks again and again with his vile pen, but the subjects of his wit seem trivial: physical punishment in the (mostly Catholic) schools of Ireland, the poor treatment of orphans, the collusion between Irish missionaries and Irish businessmen in poor countries. But what finally comes through in reading several of these poems is a deep commitment to the people of his country and a hatred of the hypocrisies of religion as it is still practiced in Ireland today. His later poetry suffers from its topicality, and it will probably not endure the tests of time and place, but somehow...
...apart from Catch-22. It represents the second installment, so to speak, of Heller's War and Peace. Over ten years ago Heller explained: "The hero is the antithesis of Yossarian-20 years later." Of his Syrian-American bombardier in Catch-22 he had written: "It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without it-lived forever, perhaps." Of his WASP business executive, Bob Slocum, in Something Happened, Heller might have written: It was a vile and muddy peace, and Slocum was dying of it-dying in slow motion...
...likable chap indeed. But since his appearance in 1954, critics and readers have remarked the spreading "swinishness" of Kingsley Amis characters-as well as the distaste the author seems to feel for his own creations. It has always been noted in extenuation that literary satire thrives on vile bodies and that swinishness justifies a measure of pique. But now Amis stands revealed as a misanthrope sans merci. From Ending Up it is clear that if anyone asked him the old vaudeville question "Would you hit a lady with a baby?" Amis might gleefully reply...
...kerosene lamp. A North Carolina moonshiner says simply: "Hits a blamed ugly drink." And then there is Colonel Leland DeVore, whose throat involuntarily contracts whenever he thinks of moonshine: "I hear, as if from far away, the gagging whisper of a long-lost friend whose favorite saying was 'Vile stuff-I wish I had a barrel...