“The 1930s — a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way.”

"James Thurber: Men, Women, and Dogs" (1975), p. 228
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The 1930s — a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the b…" by Wilfrid Sheed?
Wilfrid Sheed photo
Wilfrid Sheed 50
English-American novelist and essayist 1930–2011

Related quotes

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.”

Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.
And so on.
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Suzanne Collins photo
Tommy Douglas photo
Ibram X. Kendi photo

“Part of the reason so many Americans are so defensive is because we’ve been led to believe that racist is a fixed category, that it’s a tattoo, it’s a label. Of course they’re going to say, I’m not a racist, I’m not a bad person.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

But racist is describing what you’re saying in the moment.

On why racist is a crucial descriptive term in “How to Be an Antiracist Author Ibram X. Kendi on What We Get Wrong About Racism” https://time.com/5647303/how-to-be-antiracist-author-interview/ in Time Magazine (2019 Aug 8)

Umberto Eco photo

“The basic principle [of hermetic drift semiotics] is not only that the similar can be known through the similar but also that from similarity to similarity everything can be connected with everything else, so that everything can be in turn either the expression or the content of any other thing.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

U. Eco (1990), The limits of Intepretation, as quoted in Thomas A. Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (2020), The Semiotic Web 1991: Biosemiotics https://books.google.it/books?id=NUK0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA53.

Dave Matthews photo

“That's the magic of this band: shooting from the hip. The lights have to follow our cues, because we're not going to follow their cues. We're not going to stick to a song the way it's supposed to be. Everything is up to us. That's music to me. That's American music. We're an American band.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Dave Matthews, Rolling Stone interview "The Boys of Summer" (June 16, 2005). Eliscu, Jenny (2005). "The Boys of Summer" http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/davematthewsband/articles/story/7371942/the_boys_of_summer Rolling Stone (accessed June 19. 2006)

Henry Cabot Lodge photo
George F. Kennan photo

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

"Foreword to 'The Pathology of Power'" by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2), Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118

Herman Cain photo

Related topics