Renata Adler
Renata Adler
Renata Adleris an American author, journalist, and film critic...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth19 October 1938
CityMilan, Italy
CountryItaly
experience generation history pretend simply younger
It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history
bus buy directed jeans six sweater tourist
At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. "There's one," it said. That was in the l960s. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what?
nice criticism negative
Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective.
different coincidence type
There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.
strategy linear conversation
A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.
movie sexy lying
Though films become more daring sexually, they are probably less sexy than they ever were. There haven't been any convincing love scenes or romances in the movies in a while. (Nobody even seems to neck in theaters any more.) ... when the mechanics and sadism quotients go up, the movie love interest goes dead, and the film just lies there, giving a certain amount of offense.
movie people very-good
Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.
movie art people
The motion picture is like journalism in that, more than any of the other arts, it confers celebrity. Not just on people - on acts, and objects, and places, and ways of life. The camera brings a kind of stardom to them all. I therefore doubt that film can ever argue effectively against its own material: that a genuine antiwar film, say, can be made on the basis of even the ugliest battle scenes ... No matter what filmmakers intend, film always argues yes.
uncles cancer grandmother
My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic.
years people lessons
People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.
people community quality
Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.
fashion self clothes
It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.
brother book years
And then there were the wallflowers who had recognized for years that the thing was hopeless, who had found in that information a kind of calm. They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody's brother, somebody's usher, somebody's roommate, somebody's roommate's usher's brother... The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought a book.
cards purpose kind
Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.