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“... In​ the early 1960s, David Hockney made a series of etchings inspired by the poems of Constantine Cavafy; he went to Egypt to discover the places Cavafy had drunk coffee and picked up lovers, but in the images it’s mainly Hockney’s own life and friends who figure. The etchings touch on rapture, and the frankness of their erotic pleasure at the sight and memory of boys in bed brought Cavafy to a new, wide readership ...”

“... expected to rise temporarily, has been stuck at pre-war levels for four years or more, and shows no real sign of falling. Moreover measures of the money supply – supposed indicators of the monetary stance of the Government – are all over the place. Some over-predict the inflation rate; some under-predict it. In the United States, on the other hand, a ...”

“... No one​ thought that Ethel Rosenberg would be executed. At the time of her trial in 1951, no federal judge had sentenced a woman to death in nearly a hundred years. She hadn’t been accused of murder or of being an accomplice to a murder or of conspiracy to commit a murder. These, it seems, were the only crimes for which the American government might kill a woman ...”

“... is how many casualties we will take. It’s a gut level, fly by the seat of your pants. There’s no standard that says one US life equals X civilian lives.’ And what about the possibility that children will be hit? ‘I was hoping kids were hunkered down, hoping with artillery fire they were not out watching.’ Safeguarding American troops (‘force ...”

“... that’s what Bellow and his admirers do say. ‘The number of people hurt by Bellow is probably no more than can be counted on two hands,’ James Wood wrote, ‘yet he has delighted and consoled and altered the lives of thousands of readers.’ Leader quotes this early in the book and goes on to split the moral difference. ‘Though opinions will differ ...”

“... Chinese dialects spread all over South-East Asia during the same period (say, 1500-1800), we find no traces of any New Baghdad or New Damascus, New Wuhun or New Tientsin. What we do find are toponyms like Chiangmai (New City) or Pekanbaru (New Market), for which no ‘old’ comrades exist, and which, in any case, by using ...”

“... over $500 in cash. Because I had been surviving abroad on the equivalent of $100 a week and had no American reserves, this piquant financial arrangement was part of the deal with 20th Century Fox negotiated by my expert lawyer, Alan U. Schwartz, who represented Tennessee Williams, Tom Stoppard, Truman Capote and Mel ...”

“... proceeds apace. While the market for trade books grows more enfeebled, academic publishers show no sign of cutting back on their recondite lists. Despite the dwindling number of jobs in universities (and why else are some of these books written except to secure or keep a job?), scholars continue to turn out the daunting titles advertised in literary ...”

“... the page, he presents himself as a ‘multi-masked’ Machiavelli. ‘My lying imagination knows no limits; maybe it’s my politics which I hide from the Industry but not the women,’ he writes. Craven Hollywood agent by day, radical agitator by night, and round-the-clock horndog, he can’t understand why he’s catnip to ‘the Ladies’ Auxiliary’, as ...”

“... Israeli officials, for a man detained as a suspect in the killings of two Palestinians. The man, David Axelrod, is not related to Leon Trotsky. A man with the same name, who is a descendant of Trotsky, was questioned briefly by the police in a case of mistaken identity. The arcane character of this item, which was at the top of that day’s menu, might make ...”

“... or ‘Henry Pussycat’ – in order to become his real self set down in words. Lowell had no need for that: his self and his persona were both absolute Lowell. Yet he did share with his peers the general characteristics stated by Auden to be typical of American poets – an unremitting professionalism like that of crack ...”

“... to Banyuls. The four women left the following morning at first light. Lisa Fittko, who has no part in Birman’s story, made a preliminary excursion from Banyuls on what may well, it appears from her own memoir, Escape through the Pyrenees (1985), have been the same day. Fittko was a stateless anti-Fascist, an agitator and propagandist, born in ...”

“... a copy from behind the porn magazines at a newsstand on Hollywood Boulevard as a teenager. No matter that she didn’t understand all of its references and locutions: it spoke to her with a symphonic rumble. Its pages hosted the most important minds of the mid-century, addressing art, politics, literature and psychoanalysis: this was company she ...”

“... biography of Philip Roth, Philip Roth: The Biography. The ‘the’ of the subtitle said: accept no substitutes. Another biography of Roth was in the offing, Ira Nadel’s Philip Roth: A Counterlife, a sizeable, solidly researched, intelligently wrought handful whose subtitle, as the journalist Judith Shulevitz noted, seemed to indicate an awareness of its ...”