I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like (29 page)

E. B. WHITE

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps,
but still attached to life at all four corners.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick;
only amateurs believe in inspiration.

FRANK YERBY

Edna Ferber said similarly: “Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill, and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!”

 

Writing is thinking on paper.

WILLIAM ZINSSER

WRITERS ON CRITICS & REVIEWERS: A METAPHORICAL POTPOURRI

The poison pens of writers have been directed at many targets over the years, but never more venomously than when aimed at critics and reviewers. A sampling of the best appear below.

 

American critics are like American universities.
They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

EDWARD ALBEE

Reviewers are, as Coleridge declared,
a species of maggots, inferior to bookworms,
living on the delicious brains of real genius.

WALTER BAGEHOT

A critic is a bundle of biases held
loosely together by a sense of taste.

WHITNEY BALLIETT

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night,
they see how it should be done every night,
but they can't do it themselves.

BRENDAN BEHAN

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic.
No more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

JIM BISHOP

And, of course, with the birth of the artist
came the inevitable afterbirth—the critic.

MEL BROOKS,
from
History of the World, Part I

Critics…
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

ROBERT BURNS

The critic roams through culture, looking for prey.

MASON COOLEY

Critics…are of two sorts:
those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty,
and those, less continent, who afterwards scratch it up.

WILLIAM EMPSON

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist,
in the same way that a man becomes an informer
when he cannot be a soldier.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Don't be dismayed by
the opinions of editors, or critics.
They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

GENE FOWLER

Critical lice are like body lice,
which desert corpses to seek the living.

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

What a blessed thing it is that nature,
when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors,
contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing
clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live.
It is the same with critics—
they desire our blood, not our pain.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics
is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

JOHN OSBORNE,
quoted in
Time
magazine, October 31, 1977

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions,
are a most stupid and malignant race.
As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair,
so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

A poet that fails in writing becomes often a morose critic;
the weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

A bad review is like baking a cake
with all the best ingredients
and having someone sit on it.

DANIELLE STEELE

The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug; he deposits his egg
in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.

MARK TWAIN

A critic is a man who knows
the way but can't drive the car.

KENNETH TYNAN JOHN UPDIKE

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry
as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

JOHN UPDIKE

I have long felt that any reviewer
who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous.
He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor
and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

Critics are like the brushers of noblemen's clothes.

HENRY WOTTON

Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

W
hen I began working on this book, I wasn't sure what to title it, so I put the question to the people who subscribe to my weekly e-newsletter (
Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week
). Out of the hundreds of suggestions received, the one I finally selected was independently suggested by five separate people. I was aware of the saying—a clever alteration of a famous remark from Will Rogers—but for some reason hadn't chosen it. A special thanks to the following people:

Maya DeBus, Don Groves, Sam Hanson, Don Hauptman, and Stan Laite

My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Katherine Robinson, who is a partner in every aspect of my life, including my book-writing efforts.

I would also like to thank my agent, George Greenfield of
CreativeWell, Inc.,
and my HarperCollins editor, Phil Friedman, for their invaluable help.

Many hundreds of subscribers to my newsletter—far too numerous to list here—have provided me with quotations, many of which have found their way into this book. My heartfelt thanks to all. The contributions of the following people, however, deserve special mention: Don Hauptman for his regular
donvelopes,
Carolanne Reynolds for her helpful feedback, Terry Coleman for her knowledge of all things canine and equine, and finally to the following people for their long-standing interest in, and support of, my efforts: Karé Anderson, Amy Brennan, Pam Bruce, Jerry Caplin, Linnda Durré, Loren Ekroth, Howard Eskin, Carl Faith, Anu Garg, Fran Hamilton, Dan and Linda Hart, David Hartson, Blair Hawley,
Art Haykin, Chuck Jambotkar, Norman and Gary Kaplan, Derm Keohane, Bob Kelly, Amit Kothari, Julius La Rosa, Richard Lederer, Milton Lewin, Marlene and Barney Ovrut, Kalman Packhous, Richard Raymond III, Dennis Ridley, Don Ruhl, Lee Sechrest, Ed Sizemore, Ed Schneider, Art Tugman, G. Armour Van Horn, and Joseph Woods.

Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

 

Aaron, Henry “Hank,” 280, 289

Abbey, Edward, 17

Abley, Mark, 103–4

About, Edmond, 186

Achard, Marcel, 298

Achebe, Chinua, 45

Ackerman, Diane, 26

Adams, Douglas, 66, 239

Adams, Henry Brooks, 45

Adams, Joey, 67

Adams, John, 254, 259

Adams, John Quincy, 79, 218–19,

Addison, Joseph, 4

Adler, Mortimer, 26

Aeschylus, 26, 200

Akhenaton, 2

Akihito, Crown Prince of Japan, 60–61

Albee, Edward, 311

Alcott, Louisa May, 103, 122

Aldington, Richard, 263

Aldiss, Brian, 229

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 309

Aleichem, Sholom, 122, 163

Ali, Muhammad, 163, 280, 282, 289

Allen, Dick, 280

Allen, Fred, 124, 240

Allen, Steve, 62

Allen, Woody, 67, 140, 204, 207, 240

Allende, Isabel, 203

Allport, Gordon W., 163

Alsop, Joseph W., Jr., 259

Alsop, Stewart, 225

Ames, Fisher, 255

Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, 26, 225

Amory, Cleveland, 67

Anacharsis, 256–57

Anderson, Marian, 43

Andrews, Julie, 248

Angelino, Henry, 204

Angell, Roger, 16

Angelou, Maya, 45, 122, 143, 163

Anouilh, Jean, 163–64, 298

Anthony, Susan B., 225

Antisthenes, 3–4

Antonioni, Michelangelo, 241

Aristotle, 9, 10, 11, 14, 123, 142, 143, 259

Armstrong, Louis Satchmo,” 83

Arnold, Matthew, 111

Asch, Sholem, 298

Ashley, Elizabeth, 205

Asimov, Isaac, 123, 127, 299

Astor, Mary, 205

Attlee, Clement, 89

Atwood, Margaret, 186

Auchincloss, Louis, 84

Auden, W. H., 67, 143

Augustine, Saint, 11

 

Babbin, Jed, 92

Bachelard, Gaston, 116

Bacon, Francis, 19, 27, 186–87

Baer, Arthur “Bugs,” 187, 281

Bagehot, Walter, 13, 311

Baker, Russell, 67–68, 123, 187, 259, 280

Baldwin, Faith, 58, 115

Baldwin, James, 123, 160, 203, 241, 301

Baldwin, Stanley, 86

Ball, George, 112

Ballard, J. G., 260

Balliett, Whitney, 311

Balzac, Honoré de, 27, 45, 124, 162, 164, 187, 205, 260, 293

Bankhead, Tallulah, 87

Bardot, Brigitte, 113

Barr, Roseanne, 205

Barrie, James M., 93, 119–20, 124

Barrington, Jonah, 279

Barry, Dave, 68

Barry, Lynda, 160, 164

Barrymore, Drew, 241

Barrymore, Ethel, 241

Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste, 84

Baruch, Bernard, 299

Bates, Marston, 114

Bateson, Mary Catherine, 225

Baudelaire, Charles, 120, 164, 213, 304

Baudrillard, Jean, 205–6

Bauer, Gerard, 115

Bayan, Rick, 46, 109, 143, 225

Baylor, Don, 281

Beach, Sylvia, 299

Beale, Howard K., 85

Beard, James, 68

Beaton, Cecil, 85

Beatty, Warren, 208

Bednarik, Chuck, 278

Beecham, Thomas, 83, 85

Beecher, Henry Ward, 27, 45, 107, 162, 164, 171, 222

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 95

Begley, Sharon, 112

Behan, Brendan, 311

Belli, Melvin, 85

Belloc, Hilaire, 299

Bellow, Saul, 206, 299

Bench, Johnny, 281

Bennett, Alan, 124

Bergen, Edgar, 264

Bergman, Ingmar, 237–38, 241

Bergman, Ingrid, 225

Berle, Milton, 187

Berne, Eric, 163

Berra, Yogi, 281

Bierce, Ambrose, 158

Billings, Josh, (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), 45, 124, 144

Bishop, Jim, 311

Bismarck, Otto von, 260

Black, Lewis, 68

Blakely, Mary Kay, 187

Blanchard, Ken, 108

Blessington, Marguerite, 46, 185, 299

Blount, Roy, Jr., 73

Bocca, Geoffrey, 64

Bodie, Frank Stephen “Ping,” 281

Bogart, Humphrey, 248

Bonds, Barry, 16

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 27

Booth, Edward, 236

Booth, John Wilkes, 236

Borg, Björn, 284–85

Borge, Victor, 64

Borges, Jorge Luis, 165

Boudreaux, Donald J., 262

Boulding, Kenneth E., 17

Bourgeois, Jeanne, 149

Bourget, Paul, 292

Bowen, Elizabeth, 164, 169

“Boy George,” (George Alan O'Dowd), 88

Bradbury, Malcolm, 68

Bradbury, Ray, 46

Bradstreet, Anne, 27–28

Bradstreet, Simon, 28

Brancusi, Constantin, 102

Brando, Marlon, 94

Braude, Jacob M., 124

Brawne, Fanny, 149

Brenan, Gerald, 159, 187

Brett, George, 283

Breuer, Josef, 221–22

Brice, Fanny, 193

Britt, Stuart H., 5

Broder, David, 260–61

Brokaw, Tom, 261

Bronson, Charles, 89

Brontë, Charlotte, 44

Brooks, Albert, 241–42

Brooks, Gwendolyn, 225

Brooks, Mel, 62, 312

Brooks, Phillips, 113

Brooks, Van Wyck, 86

Brothers, Joyce, 165, 188

Broun, Heywood, 84

Brown, Drew “Bundini,” 280

Brown, Helen Gurley, 165

Brown, Jerry, 261

Brown, John Mason, 83, 106, 240

Brown, Norman O., 115

Brown, Rita Mae, 165, 206, 239

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 28

Browning, Robert, 28

Broyard, Anatole, 165

Bruno, Frank, 281

Bryan, Henry F., 242

Bryan, William Jennings, 96

Bryant, William Cullen, 2, 45, 56

Bryson, Bill, 282

Buck, Pearl S., 28

Buffett, Jimmy, 124

Bugner, Joe, 282

Bukowski, Charles, 206

Bullock, Sandra, 215

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 28

Burbank, Luther, 109

Burchill, Julie, 144

Burgess, Gelett, 165

Burke, Edmund, 262, 300

Burnett, Carol, 193, 230

Burns, George, 206, 249

Burns, Ken, 83

Burns, Robert, 312

Burroughs, John, 299

Buscaglia, Leo, 144

Bush, George H. W., 89, 90, 93, 98

Bush, George W., 90, 95, 98, 264, 267–68, 276

Butler, Brett, 206

Butler, R. A. “Rab,” 68

Butler, Samuel, 12, 46, 102, 125, 144, 223, 226

Buxton, Charles, 29

Byrne, Robert, 77

Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 106, 142, 161, 184

 

Cadwell, Lucy Lee, 171

Caen, Herb, 68

Caine, Michael, 242

Campbell, Joseph (American mythologist), 29, 109, 125

Campbell, Joseph (Irish poet), 226

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 99

Campbell, Patrick, 282

Campbell, Roy, 300

Camus, Albert, 22–23, 24–25, 105, 126, 300

Canady, John, 83

Capone, Al, 5

Capote, Truman, 69, 91, 98, 108, 125, 245, 300

Capra, Frank, 110

Cardin, Pierre, 108

Carey, Peter, 144

Carlyle, Thomas, 29

Caron, Leslie, 145

Carson, Johnny, 185

Carson, Rachel, 46

Carter, James Earl, Jr., 91, 96

Casanova, Giacomo, 125, 184

Cash, Pat, 282

Cassavetes, John, 86

Cather, Willa, 144, 226

Cecil, David, Lord, 67

Cendrars, Blaise, 300

Cervantes, Miguel de, 46, 161

Chamfort, Nicolas, 46, 144, 159, 165–66

Chandler, Raymond, 47, 72

Chaplin, Charles, 125

Charles, Prince of Wales, 83

Chase, Alexander, 242

Cheever, John, 282

Chekhov, Anton, 11, 297

Cheney, Richard “Dick,” 5, 267–68, 276

Chesterfield, Lord, (Philip Dormer Stanhope), 29, 226

Chesterton, G. K., 104, 106, 152, 188, 261

Child, Julia, 125

Cho, Margaret, 69

Chopin, Kate, 47

Christie, Agatha, 184

Churchill, Winston, 19, 31, 47, 69, 86, 89, 261–62, 267, 291

Chute, B. J., 300

Ciasno, Galeazzo, 266

Cicero, 142, 226

Clark, Frank A., 188

Clarke, Creston, 82

Clausewitz, Karl von, 262

Clay, Henry, 79, 94, 218

Cleopatra, 70

Clinton, William, 41, 259

Cocks, Barnett, 1

Cocteau, Jean, 227, 243, 301

Cohen, Leonard, 145

Cohn, Harry, 90

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 262

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 47, 142

Colet, Louise, 303

Colette, 145, 155

Collins, Churton, 97

Collins, Joan, 211

Colton, Charles Caleb, 145, 166, 181–82, 227, 262

Columbus, Christopher, 24

Comfort, Alex, 206–7

Confucius, 110

Congreve, William, 145, 181

Connery, Sean, 249

Connolly, Cyril, 47, 112, 115, 125, 145

Connors, Jimmy, 282, 284

Cooke, Alistair, 243

Cooley, Mason, 7, 166, 217, 312

Coolidge, Calvin, 92

Cooper, Jilly, 146

Copland, Aaron, 86, 243

Corelli, Marie, 185

Corey, Professor Irwin, 188

Corneille, Pierre, 175

Cort, David, 207

Cosell, Howard, 283

Cossman, E. Joseph, 166

Couric, Katie, 39

Cousins, Norman, 44, 63, 65

Covey, Steven R., 146

Coward, Noël, 64, 304

Cowley, Abraham, 126

Cowley, Malcolm, 301

Cowper, William, 47

Cox, Marcelene, 188

Craig, Walter, 85

Crawford, Joan, 86, 162

Crisp, Quentin, 86, 87, 108, 146, 207, 301

Cruise, Tom, 95

Cumberland, Richard, 29

Cuomo, Mario, 262–63

 

Dahlberg, John (Lord Acton), 259

Dahmer, Jeffrey, 286

Daly, Arnold, 283

Daly, Tyne, 246

Dangerfield, Rodney, 207

Dante Alighieri, 161

Darrow, Clarence, 30

Daugherty, Hugh “Duffy,” 283

Davies, John, 181

Davies, Robertson, 301

Davis, Bette, 166, 207, 243, 244

Dayan, Moshe, 109

de Beauvoir, Simone, 207, 227, 229

de Bernieres, Louis, 157

Deighton, Len, 263

Dekker, Thomas, 227

Delacroix, Eugène, 48

Demaret, Jimmy, 283

Democritus, 215

Dennis, Patrick, 130

de Unamuno, Miguel, 172

Deutsch, Adolph, 243

De Vries, Peter, 5, 126, 189, 207

Dewar, Thomas, 166

Dewey, Thomas, 90, 91–92

Dickens, Charles, 294

Dickinson, Emily, 103

Didion, Joan, 189

Dietrich, Marlene, 147, 208, 244

Dietz, Howard, 87

Diller, Phyllis, 70, 189, 208

Dinesen, Isak, 48

Diogenes, 30, 31

Diogenes Laertius, 142

Disraeli, Benjamin, 111, 147, 272, 301

D'Israeli, Isaac, 147

Doctorow, E. L., 302

Dodson, Fitzhugh, 30

Donahue, Phil, 230

Donne, John, 27, 290

Douglas, Kirk, 237, 238

Douglas, Norman, 302

Draco, 256

Dreiser, Theodore, 113

Drucker, Peter, 48

Dryden, John, 92

Duffy, Maureen, 166

Dulles, John Foster, 86

Dumas, Alexandre, fils, 189

Dumas, Alexandre, père, 189

Duncan, Isadora, 147

Dunn, Irina, 141

Dunne, John Gregory, 302

Dyson, Brian, 121

 

Edison, Thomas Alva, 112

Edwards, Harry, 278

Einstein, Albert, 30, 42–43, 83, 118, 126, 241, 250, 263

Einstein, Mileva, 42

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 263

Eklund, Britt, 208

Eliot, George, 48, 87, 156, 227, 263–64

Ellis, Havelock, 30, 143, 208

Ellison, Harlan, 166–67

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 22, 23, 24, 30, 42, 48, 80, 100–101, 104, 109, 110, 112, 115, 126, 167, 221

Empson, William, 312

Ephron, Nora, 70, 87

Epictetus, 40

Esar, Evan, 127

Ettinger, Bob, 147

 

Fadiman, Clifton, 103, 104, 127

Federer, Roger, 287–88

Fellini, Federico, 228

Fenwick, Millicent, 30

Ferber, Edna, 310

Feynman, Richard P., 204

Field, Eugene, 82

Fields, W. C., 70, 244

Finck, Henry Theophilus, 111

Fisher, Eddie, 91

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 228, 292, 293, 302

Flatman, Thomas, 222

Flaubert, Gustave, 167, 302, 303, 304, 312

Fleming, Ian, 208

Fleming, Peggy, 283

Fletcher, Phineas, 167

Flynn, Errol, 249

Fonda, Jane, 148

Fontaine, Joan, 208

Forbes, B. C., 31

Ford, Ford Madox, 86

Ford, Gerald, 87, 96, 264

Forster, E. M., 167

Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 31, 120

Foster, George, 284

Fowler, Gene, 307, 312

Fox, Henry, 307

Foxworthy, Jeff, 208

France, Anatole, 303

Francis, Brendan, 264

Francis de Sales, Saint, 146

Franco, Catherine, 148, 209

Franklin, Benjamin, 26, 45, 127, 148, 209, 219–20, 255, 256

Frazier, Joe, 282, 284

French, Marilyn, 159

Freud, Sigmund, 31, 88

Friday, Nancy, 209

Friedenberg, Edgar Z., 147

Friedman, Robert, 167

Fripp, Robert, 112

Fromm, Erich, 167

Frost, Robert, 11, 23, 109, 190, 296

Frye, David, 87

Frye, Northrop, 303

Fuller, Margaret, 31

Fuller, R. Buckminster, 58

Fuller, Thomas, 31

 

Gable, Clark, 89, 249

Gabor, Zsa Zsa, 190

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 264, 273

Garbo, Greta, 107

Gardner, John W., 121–22

Garfield, James A., 228