starkness

Miles Davis once said (about ballads, I think) that starkness of presentation makes the romance all the more compelling.

Or maybe something about the starkness of the conflict between man and nature makes more nuanced characterization difficult.

But the light was searching, cynical, and the wayside scenes were revealed with the despondent starkness of a Russian novel.

It is spring, and the woods in the distance are losing their starkness.

Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its starkness.

He was very gentle with man and beast, but he dreaded the starkness of disillusion cropping through again.

It showed with such starkness how hideously the Brandeis ledger sagged on the wrong side.