His second marriage to Sasha (model for Moses Herzog's nightmarish wife, Madeleine) ended in brutal acrimony with his discovery of her long-term affair with his friend and university colleague Jack Ludwig, the adulterer become cuckold, and Bellow's lust for life hardened into something equally self-aware, but more bitter.
An informal test on an unsuspecting newspaper reporter yielded a slow-rising boil of annoyance, starting with the question "What is that annoying sound?" and cresting, about 18 hours later, with cursing, a furious hunt, the device's discovery and a brutal stomping on it.
Discovery of the season: Manu Tuilagi has been brutal and brilliant at outside centre in his debut season.
The American public recovered confidence in its power to fight; it was delighted, Adams wrote, by the discovery "that it still possessed the commonest and most brutal of human qualities".
Italy's ambassador, who viewed the body a few hours after Egyptian authorities told Italy about its discovery, had already said the victim showed signs of a brutal beating and torture.
She was stunned by the experience, overcome by "shock at the discovery that the contact between man and woman could be so brutal and painful".
Either way, I suppose the idea of natural selection, no matter how brutal, is much better exposed in these films than it is on the Discovery channel.
"Shocking, brutal [and] bizarre," is how Jackson Police Chief Lee Vance on Monday described the discoveries, adding at a press briefing that the city's residents are "in a state of shock".
Loretta Ann Rosales, the commission chair, said she was horrified by the discovery of the torture scheme, more than three decades after the Philippines emerged from a brutal dictatorship.
The real delight is the discovery of Simon's perfect ear for dialogue; his masterful construction and pacing; and his empathy for his occasionally brutal but nevertheless inspirational subjects.
