Mae West vs Mailer (damnit, just read the whole article!)

For many years, the filthiest word in English was “fuck.” Even the dauntless Partridge had to use “f*ck.” (In Norman Mailer’s 1948 war novel, “The Naked and the Dead,” the G.I.s use “fug.” In what may be an apocryphal story, Mae West, meeting Mailer at a party, said, “Oh, you’re the guy who can’t spell ‘fuck’!”)

- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

Classic lingo-nerd-fest on English and its uses, Bosniak smack-talk, and one use of 'conciseness' where it ought to have been 'concision'.

Too good

As for the proposition that, if something was good enough for Dr. Johnson, it should be good enough for us, would we like to live with the dentistry, or the penal codes, or the views on race of Johnson’s time?

- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

Shakespeare and I

This 'morning' (c.2pm), in a bleary moment, I used the phrase '[my brother] and I' when I - of course - meant 'me'. This afternoon ('...' = 11pm), I read that

Usages frowned on today were once common. (Dr. Johnson split infinitives; Shakespeare wrote “between you and I,” and just about anything else he wanted.)

- Joan Acocella, New Yorker

Which just goes to show that Shakespeare had bleary moments, too.

Two classic comments on (the writings of) Helen DeWitt

Joe has found that if you want to sleep with a woman you have to spend a lot of time talking to her about her interests.

- Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

As any million-dollar litigation lawyer or two-cent literary critic will tell you, the devil is in the details. 

- Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Sunday Book Review