(Un)Intentional symbolism

Answers to some light anecdotal research, undertaken by 16-year-old Bruce McAllister.*

Featuring - surprise, surprise - some pretty good examples of bad writing along with the sort of I'm-much-too-busy-for-this dickishness you get more often than you ought from big literary figures.

There are, of course,** one or two good remarks about symbolism.

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* Fuller answers (along with interesting typed originals) available from the Paris Review Daily blog section.
** ...

Frenemies

(A new one on me.)

Hitchens v Amis; Big Papa v F Scott; you get the idea.

Worth it for the closing line on Mormon Nailer.

Upon seeing Norman Mailer in my bedroom, Saturday

Tough guys don't generally write novels, either.

- Nicholas Edge

(Discuss.)

'Norman Mailer'

Is it not somehow supremely fitting that, in this New Yorker article on the egomaniacal Norman Mailer, the only keywords offered are... 'Norman Mailer'?

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'.