With Mill's Autobiography and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, it is one of the classics of 19th-century life writing and its influence is still felt: to it we owe the mescaline experiments of Huxley and Michaux and the bleak satisfactions of Burroughs's Junky.
A man named Godfrey Minot Camille went into the Grant study with fairly bleak prospects for life satisfaction: He had the lowest rating for future stability of all the subjects and he had previously attempted suicide.
Ms. Brown sees reason to be hopeful, however: "Two out of every three complaints we receive are resolved to the customer's satisfaction," she said, "so things could be a lot bleaker".
Like a skilled doctor, she takes evident satisfaction in providing an accurate diagnosis, even when the cultural prognosis is bleak.
"Adding Machine" is the most wholly satisfying, although satisfaction is not precisely the word for the haunting aftereffects of this unrelievedly bleak show.
The Observer 's verdict: 'Collins's new novel achieves the satisfactions of the conventional novel [readability and strong characterisation] while unfolding a bleak, utterly contemporary picture of a society in terrible dissolution.
