Congratulations to Mr. James Wolcott

If I had to come up with one sentence to describe the work of world famous writer and friend-of-this-blog, James Wolcott, it would be someone who "exemplifies the dignity and esteem the essay form imparts to literature."

How cool, then, that the PEN awards have a category for that very thing!

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000): For a book of essays that exemplifies the dignity and esteem the essay form imparts to literature.
Winner: "Critical Mass" (Doubleday) by James Wolcott

Congratulations, James, most sincerely.

Your pal in the cornfield.

driftglass

James Wolcott Bids Internet Quitter Tbogg Farewell

From Mr. Wolcott:

...A blog post that begins "National vodka repository Peggy Noonan..." restoreth one's faith in comedy, and mankind. But it also wearying for a blogger such as TBogg to know that no matter how devastatingly a Nooner is zinged, there's no getting rid of her, just as there's no getting rid of David Brooks or Newt Gingrich or any other of the media pestilents that have been plaguing us since Ronald Reagan bronzed his hair. After awhile making fun loses some of its fun, and a blogger is danger of becoming bitter, and no one should become a bottler of Bitter Ironies, not when there's life to be led. After I hit "send" on this, I intend to walk barefoot into the backyard garden and inhale all that nature offers, assuming a gnat doesn't go up my nose, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Wolcott writes so purdy about leave-taking that it tempts me...

Thanks to James Wolcott

In between running up and down the State of Illinois, boxing up and painting over my life in Chicago and looking for employment, I am able to take tiny, extravagant one-hour vacations.

In New York.

In the 1970s.

I am able to take these mini-spas in a NYC I never knew and will never exist again because Mr. Wolcott's new book, "Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York" is just fucking sumptuous.

I mean, how can you not follow this sentence --

"How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell.”

-- wherever it goes?

Sumptuous, thrilling, rich, fiendishly carbonated...it grabs every lit'rary G-spot with velvet Bessey clamps and does not let up until it's had its way with you good and proper.

And for the book-buyer on a budget (namely everybody I know), its a steal because it's a god damned baklava of at least Six!Count 'Em!Six! books for price of one:

• A splendid autobiography of one of this country's finest writers, who (I learned to my surprise) did not ride in on a beam of pink light from style Heaven, but was a small town kid, barely hanging on at a dinky college you never heard of until he saw his opening and dove in hard.


• A glimpse of a bygone world where Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal rampaged through the gooey streets of a dying New York hurling anvils at each other.


• A Bible-based advice guide for Christian singles looking to check off the next box on their Life Plan!


• A practical writer's guide to putting words in a row in a way that won't make you look like a mule-kicked idiot.
  


• A loving introduction to Pauline Kael for those (like me) who did not know anything about her beyond her writing.


• A gritty, "Front Page"-style ringside seat at the ferociously idiosyncratic main events and under-cards of the 1970s New York publishing fight game. ( Is there nudity? Yes there is! Will it make you cringe? Yes it will.)

OK, so its only at least Five!Count 'Em!Five! books for price of one.

Pedants.

Amazon link here.

Here a very good NPR interview with Mr. Wolcott (thanks DonQ!)

"No Liars" Pledge Gains Momentum -- UPDATE

James Wolcott lauds Lawrence O'Donnell for his decision to banish " a congenitally lying Tea Party Republican phony (a multiple redundancy, I know) from his program's guest list" and then asks the four trillion dollar musical question:

When did Sean Hannity get elected to anything and become the cryptkeeper of the Reagan legacy?

Good question, Mr. Wolcott, and many thanks for the link.

So Mr. Wolcott continues using his Vorpal sword to great effect, and Mr. O'Donnell has stepped up. And, as readers know, Dr. Paul Krugman is already doing yeoman's work for the cause (like this from today's NYT):

Very Serious Suckers

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out:

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.

...
I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.
...

So what about you, Jill Abramson?

What about you, Tina Brown?

What about you, Betsy Fischer?

What about you, Mistah Kurtz?*

This nation can no longer survive half-Fox and half-free.

So which side do you choose?


* UPDATE: As the Republican House of Representatives votes to shove the global economy off a cliff, Mistah Kurtz shows what a creature made of pure, sniveling Beltway Centronium looks like:

Rather than muting the partisanship and hammering out a compromise so the wealthiest country on earth can keep paying its bills, the two sides seem farther apart than a week ago.

...
Each legislative body has now demonstrated that it can blow up the other’s preferred alternative. What neither has shown is the ability to craft a bill that could actually gain enough support from both parties to break the gridlock.

The day someone finally slap's Tom Friedman's dick out of this sock puppet's mouth, I will dance an Irish jig on Michigan Avenue.

Your Daily Wolcott

In the middle of this post, "...America's most beloved pterodactyl, Larry King."

I laughed.

Would have gone with "Rhamphorhynchus" myself, but that's just a quibble based on my desire to win a bet that I could use "Rhamphorhynchus" and "quibble" in the same sentence.

Crazy is for Closers

Far be it from me to be damnfool enough to attempt to copy-edit James Wolcott's prose, but I believe when describing David Mamet's new book and the author's sad descent into Right-wing conspiracy mongering:

...
Mamet has a book out called The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, which sounds like a tired rewrite of Allan Bloom twenty years late with some Norman Podhoretz Hamburger Helper, and lazy as hell.

what Mr. Wolcott meant to say was:

,,,
Mamet has a book out called The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, which sounds like a tired rewrite of Allan Bloom twenty years late with some Norman Podhoretz Hamburger Helper, and ass-banjo me with a fucksaw if it isn't as fuck-all lazy as fucking hell.

Other than that, no modifications.

Now, Mr, Mamet, will you go to lunch? Go to lunch. WILL you GO to LUNCH?

Why Wolcott?

Here's why:

A Love Supreme

...
If Lee wants to play Sidney Falco to Breitbart's J. J. Hunsecker, lighting his cigarettes and running nightclub errands, it's his pride he has to put to bed at night. But I do draw the line at...

Find out where lines get drawn here.