yes
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:05 (twelve years ago) link
attributed to some french dude also iirc
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
now that is a zing
― am0n, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:07 (twelve years ago) link
I'm going to just stipulate the collected zings of Dorothy Parker, but for example:
"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
Capote on Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing."Mickey Mantle on Jim Bouton and Ball Four: "Who?"
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:29 (twelve years ago) link
Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down a hole and die - Woody Allen.
Prob my favourite ever quote.
Except you have both the quote and the credit wrong...
― ┗|∵|┓ (sic), Sunday, 29 April 2012 01:08 (twelve years ago) link
Those guys grew up in L.A. and they don't have cow-shit on their boots - they just got dog shit from Laurel Canyon. - Tom Waits
― windjammer voyage (blank), Sunday, 29 April 2012 01:55 (twelve years ago) link
Except you have both the quote and the credit wrong.
really? i think i first saw this quoted in another book, but definitely as i repeated it here. who was it really?
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:28 (twelve years ago) link
"This book fills a much-needed gap." - Moses Hadas
― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:34 (twelve years ago) link
xp
there are a bunch of variations on that tragedy/comedy line, but they're all attributed to mel brooks
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:37 (twelve years ago) link
moses hadas quote is awesome
yeah i googled a bit, it was credited to woody allen when i first encountered it, really annoying to be wrong about it, great quote though.
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:41 (twelve years ago) link
classic Parker: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
― GoT SPOILER ALERT (Gukbe), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:41 (twelve years ago) link
Nancy Astor: "If you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:47 (twelve years ago) link
PETER GRANT: "Hello, I'm Peter Grant. I manage Led Zeppelin."
BOB DYLAN: "Hey, I don't come to you with my problems, do I?"
― pplains, Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:48 (twelve years ago) link
The Parker isn't real, afaik
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:50 (twelve years ago) link
really?
― GoT SPOILER ALERT (Gukbe), Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:51 (twelve years ago) link
JFK: "If this plane crashed, we'd probably all be killed, wouldn't we?"
MORT SAHL: "Yes, Mr. President."
JFK: "And it occurs to me that your name would be in very small print."
― pplains, Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:57 (twelve years ago) link
oh sick burn
― Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:05 (twelve years ago) link
"open manhole" is the usual version of the Brooks quote, specificity makes it funnier
― ┗|∵|┓ (sic), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:37 (twelve years ago) link
there have been a few Snopes/Straight Dope/etc. forum investigations of the Parker quote and no one can ever find that she actually said it (usually attributed to a review of Atlas Shrugged or a Benito Mussolini novel, the latter is definitely untrue)
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:43 (twelve years ago) link
too long to be a zing, but Whittaker Chambers's Atlas Shrugged review is probably the best/most brutal literary takedown "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal….Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”"
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:46 (twelve years ago) link
lol that tom waits quote reminds me of casey kasem's 'these guys are from england and who gives a shit'
― balls, Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:59 (twelve years ago) link
not quite zings, perhaps, but vladimir nabokov was the king of offhand dismissals:
Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books." That, for instance, Mann's asinine "Death in Venice," or Pasternak's melodramatic, vilely written "Dr. Zhivago," or Faulkner's corn-cobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces" or at least what journalists term "great books," is to me the sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:39 (twelve years ago) link
George Bernard Shaw, NSFWhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGKCLH05WAo
― ILX uh-huh-uh uh-huh uh-huh BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP (snoball), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:50 (twelve years ago) link
(note 'epigram' was early 90's speak for 'zing')
― ILX uh-huh-uh uh-huh uh-huh BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP (snoball), Sunday, 29 April 2012 08:51 (twelve years ago) link
early 1990s?
― the pinefox, Sunday, 29 April 2012 09:16 (twelve years ago) link
Martin Luther then attacked Henry VIII in print, calling him a “pig, dolt, and liar”. [9]:227 At the request of Henry VIII, More set about composing a rebuttal: the resulting Responsio ad Lutherum was published at the end of 1523. In the Responsio, More defended the supremacy of the papacy, the sacraments, and other church traditions. More’s language, like Luther’s, was virulent, and he branded Luther an “ape”, a “drunkard”, and a “lousy little friar” amongst other insults. [9]:230 While writing under the pseudonym of Rosseus, More mirrors Luther's own unscholarly use of language. At one point More offers to:
"throw back into your paternity's shitty mouth, truly the shit-pool of all shit, all the muck and shit which your damnable rottenness has vomited up". [16]
― Roberto Spiralli, Sunday, 29 April 2012 12:47 (twelve years ago) link
awesome thread
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:01 (twelve years ago) link
(xpost) I can't find it, but I've got a book of interviews with Nabokov somewhere, and his putdowns of other writers are pretty great.
Ditto Kael's back-to-back takedowns of Siegfried Kracauer and (of course) Sarris in I Lost It at the Movies, although both pieces tend to methodically build arguments rather than zing.
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:09 (twelve years ago) link
(allegedly)
Somerset Maugham watching Spencer Tracy during filming of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: "Which one is he playing now?"
― seapunk run. run punk run! (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:10 (twelve years ago) link
I'm with Nabokov on Pasternak and Faulkner, but Mann's asinine "Death in Venice"? ;_;
― emil.y, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:16 (twelve years ago) link
Also, I've read a bit of Nabokov's literary criticism now, and for someone who can reach the heights he can (for which read: OMG Pale Fire is amazing) he's pretty buttoned up and conservative in his thinking...
― emil.y, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:18 (twelve years ago) link
GB Shaw once wrote in a book review, "Once you put it down, you can't pick it up"
― Iago Galdston, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:18 (twelve years ago) link
Ravel has refused the Legion d'honneur, but all his music accepts it
(satie)
― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:19 (twelve years ago) link
I often laugh at well crafted (or just outrageously funny) putdowns independent of whether I agree with them or not. (Re Nabokov.)
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:30 (twelve years ago) link
Nabokov loved Cheever's "The Country Husband" so.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:41 (twelve years ago) link
Gore Vee-dal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:49 (twelve years ago) link
William F. Buckley's famous rebuttal to John Lindsay during a '65 mayoral race sort of fits: "I am satisfied to sit back and contemplate my own former eloquence."
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 13:59 (twelve years ago) link
― clemenza, Sunday, April 29, 2012 1:30 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
cf v much hitchens
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:19 (twelve years ago) link
Bide my shiny metal, ass -- Bender http://i.imgur.com/RlOaq.gif
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:27 (twelve years ago) link
in bender's ass, we abide
― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:28 (twelve years ago) link
mart & hitch
The year was 1981. We were in a tiny Italian restaurant in west London, where we would soon be joined by our future first wives. Two elegant young men in waisted suits were unignorably and interminably fussing with the staff about rearranging the tables, to accommodate the large party they expected. It was an intensely class-conscious era (because the class system was dying); Christopher and I were candidly lower-middle bohemian, and the two young men were raffishly minor-gentry (they had the air of those who await, with epic stoicism, the deaths of elderly relatives). At length, one of them approached our table, and sank smoothly to his haunches, seeming to pout out through the fine strands of his fringe. The crouch, the fringe, the pout: these had clearly enjoyed many successes in the matter of bending others to his will. After a flirtatious pause he said, “You’re going to hate us for this.”
And Christopher said, “We hate you already.”
― (REAL NAME) (m coleman), Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:32 (twelve years ago) link
Nabokov's widely spread disdain can be amusing but I don't see put-downs from him in the fabulous way cited from Parker and others upthread -- the kind of compressed wit that shows you a little of the quality that human consciousness has added to the universe
(though I do remember VN saying something about Bellow that amused me, whatever it was.)
― the pinefox, Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:33 (twelve years ago) link
I can precisely imagine Hitchens saying that, but I don't feel any sympathy or solidarity with him saying it - cos it's him and the way he would say it
― the pinefox, Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:34 (twelve years ago) link
whereas if it were Morrissey I would dig it.
I don't see put-downs from him in the fabulous way cited from Parker and others upthread -- the kind of compressed wit that shows you a little of the quality that human consciousness has added to the universe
Agree that brevity is the trickiest part--most one-liners come off as smarmy, or clumsily sarcastic, or obvious, and aren't funny at all. That's why I gravitate to things like Kael's "Circles and Squares," which is more like careful dismantling than zinging. But if you can get it right--Capote's line on Kerouac is the greatest example for me--perfection.
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 14:59 (twelve years ago) link
I like Capote's line but have never been totally sure what it means
― the pinefox, Sunday, 29 April 2012 15:02 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― emil.y, Sunday, 29 April 2012 15:04 (twelve years ago) link
"hey how about instead you eat my ass you clueless cum bubble"
- churchill
― J0rdan S., Sunday, 29 April 2012 15:05 (twelve years ago) link
It's always some zing.
― clemenza, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
hello anon
― The Startrekman, Sunday, April 29, 2012 4:19 PM (Yesterday)
― the sunno)))boys (electricsound), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRw97mX4EMg
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
AH SAY HEY MON
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
lol Startrekman
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:47 (twelve years ago) link
sick burn
― balls, Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:59
p sure that was prof. wgw of this parish tho?
― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 September 2012 00:57 (eleven years ago) link
This thread will belong to Mitt Romney come Wednesday.
Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 September 2012 01:05 (eleven years ago) link
Noel Gallagher on Jack White“He looks like Zorro on doughnuts.”
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 30 September 2012 02:32 (eleven years ago) link
"As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that."[21]
RIP big man
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:17 (eleven years ago) link
was Rummy ever this zingy?
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:18 (eleven years ago) link
no but he was a better epistemologist
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:21 (eleven years ago) link
zinging saddam just seems too easy
― iatee, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:28 (eleven years ago) link
and i had the best present i was going to send you
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/G7199-Modern-Postcard-4x6-General-Norman-Schwarzkopf-/370526552767
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:34 (eleven years ago) link
tbf a few other dudes with those qualifications were more successful than norm
― mookieproof, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:37 (eleven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/ldsUHVe.png
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 March 2013 17:22 (eleven years ago) link
In 1958 Winston Churchill broke his spine in a fall and was required to sleep with a bedrest, which he hated. He and nurse Roy Howells got into a heated argument in which the two swore at one another.In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”
Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”
Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”
“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/03/22/detente/ (!)
― s.clover, Saturday, 23 March 2013 01:56 (eleven years ago) link
accidental self zing imo
― wk, Saturday, 23 March 2013 04:36 (eleven years ago) link
XP it doesn't really work so well as a zing if the person saying it seems like a d-bag who's hard to sympathize with
― Poliopolice, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:41 (eleven years ago) link
yeah remember all those country rock albums tom waits made
― balls, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:54 (eleven years ago) link
In 2004 former Scottish Orange Order member Adam Ingram sued MP George Galloway for saying in his autobiography that Ingram had "played the flute in a sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist Orange Order band".
Judge Lord Kingarth ruled that the phrase was 'fair comment' on the Orange Order
― should we bin tapping? (darraghmac), Thursday, 20 June 2013 11:16 (ten years ago) link
Tho he did note, tbf, that there was no evidence of Ingram ever having played the flute.
The Queen’s army caught Oilill at Log na Fola, (the bloody hollow) leading to the following “rann”:
May you have wet arsesMunster scum, evil rogues,Without benefit of sun,Or bee or flower,In a lonely hollow,Without cerements in misery,May the hordes of hell follow youRound and round forever and forever
― his LIPS !!! (darraghmac), Thursday, 12 September 2013 10:26 (ten years ago) link
not so much a zing as a Bardic Hardmen entry?
― Cap'n Save-a-Co. (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 12 September 2013 10:32 (ten years ago) link
they killed them immediately afterwards, idk where that leaves the balance tbh
― his LIPS !!! (darraghmac), Thursday, 12 September 2013 10:35 (ten years ago) link
agreed it deserves recognition, anyway
― Cap'n Save-a-Co. (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 12 September 2013 10:37 (ten years ago) link
Would work fine and dandy as a "resignation from ILX speech"
― Tommy McTommy (Tom D.), Thursday, 12 September 2013 11:15 (ten years ago) link
Soon after it was published, statisticians from the American Statistical Association claimed "a random selection of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey".
― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, 3 October 2013 13:46 (ten years ago) link
https://twitter.com/jchjackson/status/479312749105647616/photo/1
http://i.imgur.com/jY6ftne.jpg
― 龜, Wednesday, 18 June 2014 21:21 (nine years ago) link
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― thomp, Sunday, April 29, 2012 1:09 PM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Off topic as so often, I can't resist mentioning that Gore Vidal described Nabokov (if I remember rightly) as being "a writer's writer in the same way that a butler is a gentleman's gentleman". Vidal was far better at these put-downs than as a critic or novelist.― Martin Skidmore, Thursday, April 11, 2002 7:00 PM (fourteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i was thinking about this quote today and i can't find any source for it outside of ilx. real or not??
― slam dunk, Thursday, 12 January 2017 22:36 (seven years ago) link
the quote that's been attributed to John McKay of the Bucs (but might have been someone else)...
"What do you think of your team's execution, coach?"'I'm in favor of it'.
― Neanderthal, Thursday, 12 January 2017 23:24 (seven years ago) link
xp variation of it appears in this amazon user review from 1999 (by "A Customer")
Richard Primus is a scholar's scholar. The description indicates not esotericism, as in "writer's writer," but exemplarity, as in "gentleman's gentleman."
https://www.amazon.co.uk/American-Language-Rights-Ideas-Context/dp/0521616212
also something here from 2000: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LZX7b_vh8_IC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=%22writer%27s+writer%22+%22gentleman%27s+gentleman%22&source=bl&ots=ooNqY_UxlQ&sig=7kqfi6LOLSIkLgFrVen5FpFQdgc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMpJX84L3RAhVLuRQKHV33A38Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22writer's%20writer%22%20%22gentleman's%20gentleman%22&f=false In this
― soref, Thursday, 12 January 2017 23:31 (seven years ago) link
trump sorely missing from this thread
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Thursday, 12 January 2017 23:46 (seven years ago) link
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but his zinger response to Lindsay Graham the other day--"still waiting to get to 1% in the polls, Lindsay?"--was pretty devastating
― Iago Galdston, Friday, 13 January 2017 00:49 (seven years ago) link
Only human beings eligible for this thread.
― Treeship, Friday, 13 January 2017 00:50 (seven years ago) link
Trump seems more of an insults guy than a zings guy
― soref, Friday, 13 January 2017 00:56 (seven years ago) link
‘By God,’ said he, ‘to put it in a word,Your shithouse rhyming isn’t worth a turd!You’re wasting time, that’s what, and nothing else.I tell you flat, sir, no more of your verse!’
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 1478
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 13 January 2017 11:59 (seven years ago) link
Vidal said that John Kerry looked like Lincoln... "after the assassination."
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, 13 January 2017 12:43 (seven years ago) link