(1930–2011)
English-born U.S. novelist, essayist, and book reviewer
Wilfrid Sheed
[Cyril Connolly] had never been a good critic, because among other things, he could not pan a friend. (I know this seems a barbarous test, but without it, everything comes unstuck; and nonfriends suffer disproportionately.)
“Cyril Connolly,” in The Good Word and Other Words (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 49.
Most writer interviews are not art at all, but a sort of cultural packaging. The cages are too small, the questioner’s powers too sweeping; what we want to know obliterates what the speaker wants to say.
“The Interview as Art,” in The Good Word and Other Words (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 211.
Letters by a living man are a bit like a stately home with the owner around—one isn’t sure how much one can touch.
“Letters of E. B. White,” in The Good Word and Other Words (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 252.