Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

The Wrath of Divines

Posted on April 30, 2021 by JMN

Like cartooning, the act of translation has proven dangerous at times. For his role in putting Christian scriptures into English, John Wycliffe’s long-dead bones were dug up, burnt, and chucked into the river by order of churchmen. … The act … Continue reading →

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‘Miner of Difficult Truths’

Posted on April 21, 2021 by JMN

I can study all day Alice Neel’s brushwork and modeling of flesh and features, how she gestures at her subjects’ surroundings with casual precision. Her “Carmen and Judy” has a frank, womanly exactness and searing intimacy that The New Yorker’s … Continue reading →

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Native ‘Son’

Posted on April 16, 2021 by JMN

A chance juxtaposition of readings* has suggested to me the perennial nature of America’s brutish policing streak. In 1941, Richard Wright’s manuscript novel “The Man Who Lived Underground” is rejected by publishers who are made queasy over scenes of violence: … Continue reading →

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‘Cry of Pain’

Posted on April 15, 2021 by JMN

Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” ruefully ironizes over a lad clever enough to “slip betimes away / From fields where glory does not stay.” Novelists, though, get more mileage out of superannuated jocks — Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom, Malamud’s Roy … Continue reading →

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Be Paint

Posted on April 11, 2021 by JMN

… [Clement] Greenberg’s organizing idea was surprisingly simple: modern painting, having ceased to be illustrative, ought to be decorative. Once all the old jobs of painting—portraying the bank president, showing off the manor house, imagining the big battle—had been turned … Continue reading →

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But Also Thank the Devil

Posted on April 6, 2021 by JMN

The worst way to defeat a social or cultural ill is to declare war on it. The U.S. declares war on problems it can’t or won’t solve. The worst way to foster a social or cultural good is to declare … Continue reading →

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And the Winner Is… Loss Vegas

Posted on April 5, 2021 by JMN

“The vast majority of MLMs [multi-level marketing companies like Amway and Ambit] are recruiting MLMs, in which participants must recruit aggressively to profit. Based on available data from the companies themselves, the loss rate for recruiting MLMs is approximately 99.9%; … Continue reading →

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Alice Neel: ‘Collector of Souls’

Posted on April 4, 2021 by JMN

“I would say she was looking at two ghetto children from uptown and bringing out the beauty in us.” [Jeff Neal, on left in the portrait with brother Toby.] (John Leland, “Two Brothers Posed for a Portrait. One Lived to … Continue reading →

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The ‘Open-(Ahem)’

Posted on March 31, 2021 by JMN

The polite, socially acceptable name by which it’s currently known is the medlar. But for the best part of 900 years, the fruit was called the “open-arse” – thought to be a reference to the appearance of its own large … Continue reading →

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Wide Load

Posted on March 28, 2021 by JMN

Jason Farrago lavishes a container shipload of exegetical rumination on Julie Mehretu’s paintings. Lines accreted in an essentially radial configuration, with large arcs orbiting an absent central axis, and orthogonal spokes sprouting from the core. (The Mehretu black line is … Continue reading →

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