great zings throughout history

I like Capote's line but have never been totally sure what it means

See, I get Capote's thing, but I think he's totally wrong, and in fact it reflects more on him than on Kerouac, and therefore the zing kind of falls flat to me. The idea that 'it just isn't art' smacks of snobbery and narrow-mindedness, not things that I really want from my artists.

"hey how about instead you eat my ass you clueless cum bubble"

- churchill

not certain why 'typing' wouldn't be 'art' - though I guess the line is tending that way, somehow

I'm sure Kerouac is art, but I'm not always sure it's very good art

Well, that's fair enough - I've only read On the Road and one other that I can't remember the name of now, so I'd not make a very good defence for Kerouac. It's more the principle of the attack I dislike - that there somehow has to be a distancing between creator and work, that there must be some objective artistic principle adhered to, and worst of all to me, I feel there is an implication that phenomenological accounts are artistically void.

Kerouac influenced me when I read On the Road in university, but it was the kind of influence that was short-lived--doubt I could get through very much of the novel today. Conceding that there's some snobbery at work there--the Beats were new, Capote had been around for a few years--the meaning of his line seems as clear as could be to me: this guy's just banging it out, and he badly needs an editor. I probably first came across the line when I was discovering Kerouac, and I even found it funny then.

DEBUTANTE: I've made a bet with a friend that I can get you to say three words to me.

CALVIN COOLIDGE: Fuck you, cunt.

--- that there somehow has to be a distancing between creator and work, that there must be some objective artistic principle adhered to, and worst of all to me, I feel there is an implication that phenomenological accounts are artistically void.

I don't think I can see these things in Capote's line.
If anything the 'banging it out' sounds more like what he was saying. But then, I am not quite sure what he was saying.

I once wanted to reuse this line, in a different context, namely re the late alcoholic BRENDAN BEHAN -- cos he didn't write the work, just dictated it and someone else typed it. I think I was going to say that in print until PJ MILLER told me not to cos it was not nice to alcoholics.

Gore Vee-dal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, April 29, 2012 9:49 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/44/We_Hate_It_When_Our_Friends_Become_Successful.gif/220px-We_Hate_It_When_Our_Friends_Become_Successful.gif

"hey how about instead you eat my ass you clueless cum bubble"

- churchill

― J0rdan S., Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:05 AM

needs context - the reply to his wife asking him to pass the salt

auto-zing:

Bob Monkhouse: "When I said I was going to become a comedian, they all laughed. Well, they're not laughing now."

lot of amazing zing scholarship itt... not

That one hurts.

PWN

One last (promise) thought on the Capote line: it's funnier when you hear it in his voice.

having made it to page 2 of On the Road, I'm with him.

From a letter from Groucho Marx to S. J. Perelman: "From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

literary zings are usually a lil too on the nose almost as if some lonely person fuming w/professional jealousy puzzled over them in a room until they got it just right

paraphrasing wilde ^

i have nothing to declare but my klout score

in one of the late marx bros. movie there's a bit where chico is taking a photo and says to groucho 'just look at me and pretend to laugh'

'i've been doing that for thirty years'

which i presume was scripted but i like to believe it wasn't, you know.

-

re: capote: the immediate context is kerouac's claim/lie that he wrote he wrote OTR in one three-day binge, i believe

of whom was it that gore vidal said: "a writer's writer, in much the same way a butler is sometimes called a gentleman's gentleman"? still laughing at that one tbh

Yeah Capote was basically saying, possibly inaccurately, that Kerouac just shat it out without putting much thought or craft into it.

sigh

Gore Vidal's essays consist of three dozen zings strung together.

xp - i think it would be more accurately analysed down to "I distrust the veracity of Kerouac's claim that he wrote it in three days and, anyway, if so, this would not impact its literary value, and certainly would not impress its value upon me, as Kerouac seems to think it would"

by this point the fun of it is sort of dead, though

Well, that's pretty much what I was saying. And I disagree that working in that way is necessarily detrimental to good art - hence my defence of phenomenological writing. Obviously, not all art created in such a way will be good, but to suggest that it is simply not writing is fallacious.

xposts

literary zings are usually a lil too on the nose almost as if some lonely person fuming w/professional jealousy puzzled over them in a room until they got it just right

this is confusing way of thinking to me

great zing lawyers throughout history

worth posting, for those who haven't seen: http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/the-churchill-wit/

I like Gore Vidal's famous one from just after Norman Mailer had decked him - "as usual, words fail him".

i will never understand 'too on the nose' as a criticism

'this thing is as it should be, only, too much so'

maybe because thats not what it means

i do believe its possible that you will some day understand it tho

"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

i've seen this quote with "vassar" instead of "the yale prom" elsewhere

lagoon's criticism is basically "oh yeah mr. witty person, with yr stinkin' wit, there, and your BOOKS? well I bet you have ~no social life~ lol"

worth posting, for those who haven't seen: http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/the-churchill-wit/

― s.clover, Sunday, April 29, 2012 2:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol

lagoon's criticism is basically "oh yeah mr. witty person, with yr stinkin' wit, there, and your BOOKS? well I bet you have ~no social life~ lol"

― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, April 29, 2012 3:47 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a v poor reading!

it's a v. poor reading... LOUSY BOOKS

yeah i thought he was just saying that 'zings' are more a product of real time communication (IRL conversation, internet etc) than written correspondence or literature

that and a lot of them are just 'i throw yr book out the window!' oohhhh

like why is nabokov pretending faulkner is some sort of horrible writer, he mad

i demand veracity in my zings

i think it's a little short-sighted to not acknowledge that there was a huge gulf of culture and context between capote and kerouac or nabakov and faulkner, just because they're all in the canon now doesn't mean one guy was a moron for not loving another, let them have their salty putdowns

oh they can have them

to be sure most literary greats were often lonely guys sitting in rooms fuming with professional jealousy, it just seems silly to knock them for that like every other zinger in this thread was a super confident rock star

i have nothing against lonely guys in rooms but the desk gangster routine is just kinda tiresome when its so clearly motivated by professional competition, i mean there are some quality zings iit but a lot of them just dont land imho

anyway ive clearly become that which i most despise re my initial zing scholar post, everyone plz post the zings

you're putting a little too much effort into summarizing ilx there bro

xpost