Word: bleakness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...JOYCE CAROL OATES is any indication, modern literature has entered a stage of terminal morbidity. Oates' picture of reality is so bleak that it could only be appreciated by a civilization dying slowly of self-disgust. Oates' characters are devoid of any sympathetic traits--not only are they lost and lonely, they are faceless and neurotic and filled with hate. Oates strips existential crisis of all its nobility, turning it into a form of mental illness. She transforms spiritual torment into a loathsome disease, a kind of leprosy of the soul...
...rather than steady growth. But the scary overall figures mask conditions that are both better and worse than they seem. On the plus side, the unemployment rate for all whites is 6.1%. Among white adult males the rate is only 4.5%, and for women 6.8%. Where the picture is bleak is among blacks (13.9%) and teen-agers (17.3%); worst of all is joblessness among blacks under...
...stand for such mass terror. Then, the poet Anna Akhmatova wrote: "The stars of death stood over us./ And Russia, guiltless, be loved, writhed/ under the crunch of bloodstained boots,/ under the wheels of Black Marias." Life under Lenin's current successor has relaxed, grown somewhat less bleak, but there still seems no prospect that the mythology will be fulfilled: that, in the fullness of time, the state will begin to wither away and leave only the classless, abundant workers' paradise. On the contrary, the stolid bureaucracy expands, reduplicating itself and its controls. The Revolution's promises...
...firmly, recognizing the importance of stability. For three years running Sullivan has pushed down the city's property tax rate, and Vellucci, one of the five councilors who voted Sullivan out of office in 1970, now stands squarely behind him. Sullivan has gotten developers to invest in the historically bleak area of Kendall Square in East Cambridge, and Vellucci says that under Sullivan's leadership Cambridge is doing as well as any city in Massachusetts at pulling down federal money to boost the city economy...
...educational analysts agree: the academic job market looks bleak now, and during the coming decade it will worsen considerably. Optimists estimate annual job openings will plummet from the current level of 15,000 to about 4500 during the early 1980s...