James Wolcott and Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs

Let's face it, our attention spans have been decapitated by modernity. Our knowledge, criticism and even entertainment now comes to us in 140 neat characters. We ourselves can be critics, just by clicking on a “thumbs up.”

Today, serious commentary and serious criticism is in short supply. It's not gone..but it's in remission. One place it still survives is in the presence of James Wolcott and and his work, primarily today, on the pages of Vanity Fair.

His just published collection of work and essays Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs, reminds us of what it was like, not that long ago, when ideas seemed to matter. When we thought as well at felt, and when the moral power of language made us sit up and take notice.

My conversation with James Wolcott:

Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair on the Wacko for Wasilla

Todd Purdum, in the current Vanity Fair, has the latest must read on the Wacko from Wasilla. Andrew Sullivan, as always with Palin, sums it up best. Money quote:

As the months have gone by since John McCain revealed his total cynicism and contempt for America's national security by selecting one Sarah Palin to be a potential vice-president of the United States, we Palinpregnant have learned that every single ghastly attribute we discovered in the campaign is worse than we thought at the time. The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.