Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Perfect

Washington Post TV Columnist Lisa de Moraes has a wonderful column this morning about the now infamous White House Party Crashers and their inane statements and TV appearances so far (Jezebel has a really good rundown on this for those who haven't had enough). Lisa managed to pull off one of my favorite all time bits of attribution for a quote, in discussing how Michaele Salahi keeps saying the publicity has ruined her life:

"It's been really unbearable to go through," she wailed from the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown, where she had arrived nearly two hours earlier so people could put on her perfect makeup and dress her spectacular hair.

"Our lives have been destroyed," she added blondly.


This reminds of one of my favorite bits of fiction writing, by New Yorker writer Ring Lardner, who wrote of a young man with his father, who obviously didn't know where he was going:

Are you lost daddy, I asked ten-
derly.

Shut up, he explained.

1 comment:

dogimo said...

I thought I commented on this. I was delighted by the device! It's like Tom Swifty put through 'enry 'iggins finishing school and made to be not only more sophisticated, but of far more use to the real work of prose.

I don't recall what I said about it. But I've already toyed with the idea of incorporating it into my fiction and possibly, my minutes of various meetings.