Monday, December 5, 2011

All you need to know

Here’s an article on literary critic Dwight Macdonald (whose essays I have sampled and found to make for painful reading, largely because of his convoluted prose style). The one thing in the article I found worth remembering (aside from the dreary truth that Macdonald was an elitist’s elitist) is Leon Trotsky’s comment about the writer, which has so many useful and contemporary applications: “[E]veryone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.”

5 comments:

Michael Lonie said...

Another good line attributed to Trotsky was "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

bruce said...

Aye, well up until creating the hamburger franchise, the MacDonalds are not known for making wise decisions.

Rally to the Bruce!

Paco said...

Yeah, Trotsky got off a good one every now and then.

Good stuff on the clans, Bruce.

richard mcenroe said...

Yeah, Trotsky could be pretty sharp til he got hammered...

Paco said...

Picky, picky...