Word: wino
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...couldn't do it. I needed those tickets in my hands, as badly as a wino needs a bottle...
...wino with rheumy eyes and a scraggly beard slumping against a skid row doorway. A muttering mental patient, his hair caked with dirt, searching for the warmth of a steam grate on a bitingly cold day. These are stereotypes of the homeless: desolate men who are still with us in abundance, causing Americans to look the other way, half wishing such unfortunates did not exist...
THOUGH BEREFT of any truly relevant emotional depth, Litt's journey into the ridiculous has its humorous moments. As a result of the unsupervised infant's nasty habit, Papa Harry Goldstein (Billy Salloway) turns into a wino. Mama Nancy (Jennifer Harris) liberates herself from housewifehood by taking on a job as a pancake flipper at the neighborhood IHOP. Young Benjamin Goldstein (Alfred Naddaff) finds solace in the ways of the Hare Krishna, and his sister Melissa, played brilliantly by Lucy Soutter, pukes her way into heavy-duty bulimia. This is the disparate stuff workshop pieces are made...
...after column of some of the most entertaining personals. Many of them are suffused with a soft-focus romanticism. Firelight plays over the fantasy. Everyone seems amazingly successful. The columns are populated by Ph.D.s. Sometimes one encounters a millionaire. Occasionally a satirical wit breaks the monotony: "I am DWM, wino, no teeth, smell bad, age 40--look 75. Live in good cardboard box in low- traffic alley. You are under 25, tall, sophisticated, beautiful, talented, financially secure, and want more out of life. Come fly with...
...scenes on the gritty sidewalks of Manhattan allow Berger to find a more congenially savage mode, incorporating an authentic urban snarl into his impeccable diction. His hapless narrator enjoys perfect security by disguising himself as a wino ("That there is no effective form of defense against a derelict is an irreducible truth of city life"). Even the deposed Prince of Saint Sebastian hustles a string of personal appearances, with the Firm as his agent. But these passages make up a mere fraction of the book. As for the rest, one can only agree with a neighborhood hooker who unburdens herself...