great zings throughout history

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??

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'.

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

trump sorely missing from this thread

trump sorely missing from this thread

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

Only human beings eligible for this thread.

Trump seems more of an insults guy than a zings guy

‘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

Vidal said that John Kerry looked like Lincoln... "after the assassination."