"Men, Women and Other Anticlimaxes"

[fiefoe]

Knowing that Broyard never quite owned up to the fact that he was black in his professional life certainly affected my reading of his essays, adding particular shadings to seemingly unexceptional phrases. In shadows, ambiguities teem.

__  journeys in disguise
__ 'the famous black writer James Baldwin'
__ I can only suppose that some New York City women know exactly what they are doing, and some do not. Like actresses, the good ones play the part for all it's worth and the others simply try to live it.
__ Orphans of the avant-garde, we outdistanced our history and our humanity. ... I saw myself as spawned by time... I deracinated and rationalized my image.

"Reflections on an Unphotogenic Childhood"

• (In our childhood photos,) we tired to look as neutral as possible in order to deny what we could not anticipate.
• Mary McCarthy wrote that the American personality always looked as if it had just had a bad haircut.
• I realized how far Americans have come in making themselves look better. ...I think they have lost something, though, in this cosmetic evolution. ...we looked as if we realized what we were in for... by (my children's children's) time, ... that stillness, will be thought unnatural, a morbid shirking of a child's duty to enjoy himself while he can.
• Then, as American life continues its liberating advance,... these tapes will be erased and my grandchildren will step out boldly into the future without the embarrassment of a past.
  

__ A man is one of those unfinished creatures who cannot survive, or prosper at least, without the consolation of another of his species.
__ A child is never truly weaned until his heart is broken.
__ Women are usually given the secondhand emotions, the feelings that depend on somebody else's doing something first.
__ Perhaps one needs the sight of many people in order to develop a sense of irony. ... The same is true of a tragic sense of life, or the instinct of politics.

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