“Asbury’s book is a tribute to the magical power of naming: long stretches of ‘Gangs [of New York]’ are taken up by lists of gangs and villains and even fire engines, and, like the lists of ships in the Iliad, they are essential to the effect…We read of Daybreak Boys, Buckoos, Hookers, Swamp Angels, Slaughter Housers, Short Tails, Patsy Conroys, and the Border Gang, of Chichesters, Roach Guards, Plug Uglies, and Shirt Tails, and we melt.”
— Adam Gopnik discussing Herbert Asbury’s cult-fave 1928 book in the New Yorker
“What you really are afraid of is that you’re competing against somebody who is rich and irrational. I mean, it used to be a given, a saying in the industry: Don’t ever bid against Rupert Murdoch for anything Rupert wants, because if you win you lose. You will have paid way too much.”
— media mogul John Malone, in an interview with Ken Auletta at NewYorker.com
“Just as Italians don’t translate Johnny Cash as ‘Giovanni Soldi,’ and we don’t take Federico Fellini and rename him ‘Freddy Cats,’ so the term Arte Povera has to stand unchanged and unexplained.”
— Blake Gopnik, brother, writing (entertainingly but incorrectly) about the Hirshhorn Gallery’s latest show in the Washington Post
“Then sometimes you’re given the chance to make a memory for someone, give them a pleasant moment to remember, which is the greatest thing you can ever do. Keep the Oscar and all that.”
— Rod Steiger, Oscar winner, on Jon Favreau’s Dinner for Five on IFC
“We’re a little tired of the thin-skinned whining, which is much of what we get from north of the border…
— Pat Buchanan, defending his comment about “Soviet Canuckistan” on the CBC’s As It Happens [Pat’s about 12:00 into the stream.]
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the making of, by greg allen