ellauri106.html on line 182: Roth fought back skewering one of his harshest critics, Irving Howe who he cast as supercilious Milton Appel in 1983’s The Anatomy Lesson with a typically uproarious rant:
ellauri107.html on line 156: "I have, for instance, never—I repeat, never—written a word about women in general. This will come as news to my harshest critics, but it’s true. Women, each one particular, appear in my books. But womankind is nowhere to be found.” They just happen to be assholes one and all. Men are so much nicer friends.
ellauri107.html on line 246: Billy Budd provides an implicit indictment of the culture, whether military or civil, that encourages the kind of closet where a Claggart so readily succumbs to his “depravity according to nature.” Captain Vere likewise shows a closed, perhaps also “closeted” mind as ready prey for the phenomenon of evil. In Vere’s presence, as Billy is struck dumb by Claggart’s accusation, Claggart is struck dead by a single blow from Billy’s fist, the only response he can muster to defend himself. Although Vere cherishes Billy as “an angel of God” and knows him to be innocent of Claggart’s charges, he resists any bending of rules to protect him against the harshest of consequences for his act of insubordination. Ruthlessly silencing the dictates of his heart, “sometimes the feminine in man,” Vere effects what Claggart’s malice alone could not -- Billy’s total destruction.
ellauri241.html on line 1540: Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,

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