Tom Carson

“Woodward is hardly trying to cripple a presiden­cy. (He's already done that, right?) But like his fellow perma­nent Washingtonians, he thinks it only fitting to put Clinton in his place.”

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“Sinatra remained white America’s last completely satisfying definition of masculine style — to somewhat disconcerting effect, let me add”

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“In America, poetic truths have real-life con­sequences, and Mailer is one of the few American intellectuals to perceive this fact as both fundamental and fundamentally good”

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“Here's a slogan for the '90s: in the future, everyone will be ahead of their time for 15 minutes”

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"Lester ennobled the ludicrous inner life of pop fans by telling the truth about it — by discerning that inner lives, and not music, were what pop music was about"

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The distinctively modern aspect of Nixon is that he can’t help betraying an awareness of the artifice in himself