“There is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone.”
Our 55 founding fathers managed 54 bottles of Madeira–among other things–while working on the constitution. Makes the two-martini lunch look, well, dry. And let’s face it, nothing goes with a drink like a cigarette (unless it is a cigar).
“I am always having it pointed out to me that life in Georgia is not at all the way I picture it, that escaped criminals do not roam the roads exterminating families, nor Bible salesmen prowl about looking for girls with wooden legs.” (via Maud)
The music of your genes.
“Darwin the scientist is beyond famous. Darwin the scribbler is comparatively obscure.”
Do you remember Timothy McVeigh?
New Warren Zevon book, released simultaneously with a CD, means “we hear the original line, ‘Well I pawned my Smith & Wesson, and I went to meet my man,’ which was later to be replaced by the much more writerly – in the most literal sense – ‘“ pawned my Smith-Corona.'”
Daphne Du Maurier was creepier than Hitchcock–at least as far as “The Birds” was concerned.
“Stalin the flirt, the boyfriend, even the husband, was sometimes tender and humorous.”