His novel Terug tot Ina Damman (1934; "Back to Ina Damman"), a love story, was considered equally shocking when it appeared, but, having a less bitter theme, it probably remains the most popular of his more than 50 novels.
In keeping with the bitter theme, she puts up black balloons instead of red ones.
Yet the current production by his Atlantic Theatre Company, with its quiet, deliberate direction and understated performances, only heightens the bitter themes for which Mr Mamet's distinctive, biting dialogue was meant.
Yet in "The Wife," Meg Wolitzer has fashioned a light-stepping, streamlined novel from just these dolorous, bitter-sounding themes.
By William McKibben The New Yorker, December 26 , 1983P. 30 Talk story about "Better, Not Bitter," the advertising theme for the Kronenbourg beer account.
And it is the city's lackluster image — as much as taxes or budgets or crime — that has been a recurring theme in the bitter and still unresolved race for mayor between Kevin Johnson, the former professional basketball star, native son and local businessman, and Heather Fargo, a career public servant seeking her third term as mayor.
A constant theme of this bitter comedy is generational conflict, which bursts through the background of the action; amid jolting frankness regarding sex, money, pride, and status, the real stakes of the intimate life all remain trapped behind blustery, self-abasing gamesmanship.
However, a bitter public row over a Mao-themed extravaganza held in Beijing earlier this month has unexpectedly thrust the decade-long upheaval back into the headlines.
Ms. Kavanaugh included the four main tastes, SOUR, SALTY, BITTER and SWEET by salting (sorry) the theme with two-word phrases starting with each of the above.
Towards the end, Huckabee wandered through religious themes and sounded almost as bitter as McCain at times.
The movie powerfully revisits a theme touched on last year in the bitter comic drama "Up in the Air": the devastating impact of sudden downsizing on corporate executives who have lived by the treacherous adage "You are what you do".
