Saturday, November 25, 2000
Sense and Nonsense
At the top of the juvenile pantheon, the benevolent ruler of all that he sees, sits Dr. Seuss. In the world of children's culture, perhaps only Walt Disney has as wide and enduring name recognition. But whereas Disney was primarily an impresario and an empire builder, the Henry Ford of fantasy, Dr. Seuss, who died in 1991 at the age of 87, conformed to a different American archetype: the solitary genius who happens, almost in spite of himself, to be a canny entrepreneur.
The New York Times Magazine
posted by Marco Graziosi 6:17 PM
So Elegant, So Intelligent
T. S. ELIOT knew that his carefully constructed persona could be forbidding. He satirized himself, gently but tellingly, in a piece of light verse:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
[A review of WORDS ALONE: The Poet T. S. Eliot, by Denis Donoghue,326 pp., ew Haven:Yale University Press.]
The New York Times Book Review
posted by Marco Graziosi 8:48 AM
Monday, November 20, 2000
You're not so bad, Mr. Grinch
The story has a moral lesson no different than Dickens's A Christmas Carol -- but with a tone that is loony rather than melodramatic. It's basically about learning what the true value of Christmas is. The Grinch (Jim Carrey) is a cave-dwelling curmudgeon who lives with his dog Max at the top of Mt. Crumpit.
CBC Infoculture
posted by Marco Graziosi 2:54 PM
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