Her drinking - always heavy - got out of hand, she wasn't able to write fiction or essays (she spent four months working on a review of Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf before giving it up), and she made increasingly cranky statements that couldn't have endeared her to anyone.

Actually, American Impressionism was never very good to begin with, which may partly account for why Hassam, a zealous self-promoter who became increasingly cranky and jingoistic in his public remarks, felt he had to argue so violently to defend it.

He also begins to grow increasingly cranky and crotchety.

What's making us increasingly cranky about our fellow citizens?

In the fall, the town stands in the migratory path of the world's largest concentration of polar bears, now increasingly cranky after losing three pounds a day since June.

The Beach Boys' signing of their first contract with Capitol and the scoring of their first national chart successes zip by in two pages, while whole chapters are devoted to the recording of the group's crummy middle- and late-70's albums and its endless touring as an increasingly cranky oldies act.

"That's almost two hours," scowled Mr. Dreiling from Sarasota, Fla., who was with his wife and two increasingly cranky children.

In this increasingly cranky Congress, with each party all but calling the other a liar, the bitterness spilled over to the Senate, where Democrats are frustrated by Republican control of the agenda.

A bear population that is expanding in numbers and range, increasingly cranky after a record number of typhoons have ruined the acorn harvest, is glaring back.