Word: grueling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dante, a gifted parodist, adds spice to the gruel with glancing references to vintage cartoons, Sergio Leone movies and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. His sight gags can be as nimble as a house number that, when budged, somersaults from a nine to a six, revealing the new neighbors' address as 666, the sign of the Antichrist. But like many a Hollywood Voltaire, Dante wants his Candide candied. This is satire that hedges its bets. By the end, Ray and his friends must be heroes as well as oafs; the new neighbors must be villains as well as victims...
...departmental offerings did count for the Core, students could feast at a smorgasbord of courses instead of grinding by on the thin gruel of Core selections. After dealing with brackets, fall/spring course distinctions and scheduling conflicts, the current Core menu becomes very weak indeed...
...current contenders in a van in Iowa and New Hampshire, and you are certain to encounter half a dozen reporters working on psycho-profiles. Tape recorders at the ready, they push and prod the candidate for his formative experiences: Was your father cruel, did your mother feed you gruel, were you popular in school, did you break the Golden Rule...
...Breakfast is passed through the kormushka in a shallow bowl. Bread, a thin gruel called kasha, and hot water...
...limits. "The literature I care about most comes out of a deeply rooted sense of place," says Kennedy. "Without this element, the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst, a thin gruel of the ego." The author's fondest appreciation of his birthplace is O Albany (1984), three parts raffish history to one part autobiography...