Have you ever wondered what would happen if Ellen DeGeneres, America’s favorite lesbian, had a mind meld with a Borscht Belt standup? OK, maybe not, but I think it might go … something like this: Hey, what a crowd. I haven’t seen so many wooden beads since Alice B. Toklas was on This Is Your…
I believe that should have been “literature aren’t data,” Mr. Franzen
“Yes, in theory, words are words. But literature isn’t data. The difference between Shakespeare on a BlackBerry and Shakespeare in the Arden Edition is like the difference between vows taken in a shoe store and vows taken in a cathedral.” Jonthan Franzen, ruminating on truth, beauty, and wood pulp at the behest of David Sarno.
Krauthammer gone wild!
“Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history.”—CK,…
Oh, that’s why he’s so boring
In the course of his end-of-year retrospective, New York’s David Epstein gives us a frightening peek inside his own damn brain pan during this glowing review of Michael Clayton: “I play [Tom Wilkinson’s] last scene with Tilda Swinton over and over in my mind: “Do I look like I’m negotiating?” And, most inspiring: “I am…
Why, yes, I am a genius. Thank you for noticing!
Dennis Denby, critiquing Daniel Day-Lewis’ enunciation in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, collapses under the weight of his own brilliance: “He lowers his chin slightly, and his dark eyes dance with merriment as he speaks in coarse yet rounded tones, the syllables precisely articulated but with a lengthening of the vowels and final…
More Shit You Don’t Want to Know About Henry James
Henry James is the classic writer’s writer for the English language. If you don’t like Henry, you aren’t really a writer. That’s not to say that Henry didn’t go overboard, a lot. The fuss and feathers quotient in his work was always high, but I’m a huge fan of The Bostonians, not to mention classic…
Norman Mailer, RIP
The most important thing to remember about Norman Mailer is that he wasn’t very smart. When he hit the big time in 1948 with The Naked and the Dead, Mailer’s heart and soul was stuffed with big, fat American novels like An American Tragedy, USA, and Look Homeward, Angel. He arrived at the party to…