#be

Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized. ↗

— James Wolcott

#become #been #design #iconography #like

I never accepted why there should be some invisible, wavy cutoff line separating Great Fiction from phosphorescent beauties and dollhouse miniatures, novels that contain a whole world in a snow globe. ↗

— James Wolcott

#beauties #contain #fiction #globe #great

It isn't that NPR is matriarchal but that it has dedicated itself to not being patriarchal in its outlook and presentation, stipulating from the outset that its headline voices would not resound across the fruited plains from big male bags of air sent from Mount Olympus. ↗

— James Wolcott

#air #bags #being #big #dedicated

Like 'Twin Peaks,' '24,' 'Mad Men,' and 'The Sopranos' before it, 'Downton Abbey' enriches the iconography and collective lore of pop culture. It replenishes the stream. ↗

— James Wolcott

#before #collective #culture #enriches #iconography

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. ↗

— Thomas Wolfe

#forget #reader #reads #reason #remember

Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion. ↗

— James Wolcott

#bin #bleached #clan #diversion #endless

Stars wide of belt often cultivated a gentlemanly grandeur, a groomed refinement that filtered through their fingertips - the dainty fidgets of Hardy's plump digits, Orson Welles performing magic tricks with nimble dexterity, Jackie Gleason lofting a teacup to his lips as if he were Lady Bracknell - or through a fine set of twinkle-toes. ↗

— James Wolcott

#cultivated #dainty #filtered #fine #fingertips

The advent of DVD/Blu-ray reissues of classic Hollywood and foreign films has been a boon to film buffs, who can now study their favorites in all their glistening detail and restored palettes. ↗

— James Wolcott

#been #boon #classic #detail #dvd

The Beltway media went into caroming-off-the-walls hysterics over Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, whipping itself into a flaming casserole even as Clinton's standing with the American people remained upright and firm, so to speak. ↗

— James Wolcott

#american people #beltway #bill #bill clinton #clinton

The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself. ↗

— James Wolcott

#conned #government #lies #media #ourselves