Saturday, June 20, 2015

Oscar Wilde on America


In an epigraph to his book, Wilson quotes Oscar Wilde:
The crude commercialism of America, its materializing spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things and its lack of imagination ... are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

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--From the June 19, 2014 New York Times book review (by Clancy Martin) of Keep It Fake, by Eric G. Wilson

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