“A great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heartthrob, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American”
“Though his work for human rights is unassailable, the books grow worse and worse, the tales of his derring-do more and more farfetched. Finally, without at all forgiving him his lies, one feels sorry for Kosinski.”
“Black culture doesn’t lack for modernist and postmodernist artists, just their critical equivalents. And now that, like Spielberg’s Poltergeist, they’re here, might as well face up to the fact that there’s no avoiding the recondite little suckers”
“The most popular Marvel hero has a terrible identity problem, a marked inferiority complex, and a fear of women. He is anti-social, castration-ridden, racked with Oedipal guilt, and accident-prone”
“I think ‘Acid Test’ is a great book, certainly the best to come out of the ’60s… But there is something more: ‘Acid Test’ is about the whole sticky problem of optimism.”
“Nearly four decades after it was first published in France... ‘The Second Sex’ remains the most cogent and thorough book of feminist theory yet written.”
“The situationists were bent on discovering the absolute ability to criticize anyone, anywhere — without restraint, without the pull of alliances, and without self-satisfaction. And they were bent on turning that criticism into event.”
“Our failure to devise an effective response to AIDS is partly a product of the silence of our culture. We are raised to regard epidemics as relics of distant lands and ancient eras; when an outbreak does occur, it seems unprecedented, unnatural.”
