Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany

by Dwight Garner

A selection of favorite quotes that the celebrated literary critic has collected over the decades.

From Dwight Garner, the New York Times book critic, a rollicking, irreverent, scabrous, amazingly alive selection of unforgettable moments from forty years of wide and deep reading. Garner's Quotations is like no commonplace book you'll ever read. If you've ever wondered what's really going on in the world of letters today, this book will make you sit up and take notice. Unputdownable!

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Writing

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 10, 2020

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A commonplace book is a collection of memorable words, phrases and sentences the collector has gathered over a lifetime of reading, listening, and just being there. Dwight Garner has published his as Garner’s Quotations. It has its moments, but it is of necessity a reflection of his tastes, which are not often mine, and might or might not be yours.

The book is simply an unbroken listing of these lines and their authors. They are grouped around a word or a theme, which might go one for four or five quotes, and then another takes over. There is no progression or division. On the internet, it would be another endless scroll.

There are witticisms, opening lines, offhand remarks, song titles, and carefully constructed ad libs. Mostly, there is a lot of sex, but not as much as the four letter words that describe it as well as modifying everything else in life and the universe. As usual in books like this, some quotes are repeated, as the work that goes into volumes like this is nothing like the work that goes into a real book with chapters and a beginning, middle and end.

I could find eight I would paste into my own commonplace book, if I had one:
Fox News did to our parents what they thought video games would do to us. (Ryan Scott)
Nothing risqué, nothing gained. (Alexander Woollcott)
Ducking for apples – there but for a typographical error is the story of my life. (Dorothy Parker)
When someone boasted they were writing a novel, Peter Cook replied “Neither am I.”
My life was the best omelet you could make with a chainsaw (Thomas McGuane)
If this is tea, please bring me some coffee, but if it is coffee, please bring me some tea. (Abraham Lincoln)
I did not fully understand the dreadful term “terminal illness” until I saw Heathrow for myself. (Dennis Potter)
Feminism hasn’t failed, it’s just never been tried. (Hilary Mantel)

David Wineberg

[Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a miscellany nerd, so this book was right up my alley. This is one of those interests that if you know, you know. If you don't know, this book isn't for you.

This unbiased review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Commonplace books are very personal, which means others will rarely appreciate what the author likes.

[Logan Noble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very fun book to get lost in, an avalanche of one-liners. I have a commonplace book of my own (Garner and I have very different tastes I think) and the differences in our focus is fascinating.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Dwight Garner's reviews in the New York Times Book Review (although I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over him giving "Trust Exercise" a rave), and I've always especially enjoyed the way he brings fun quotes or literary anecdotes into his reviews. "Garner's Quotations" is a handbook of these quotes, which Garner has been recording in his commonplace book for nearly four decades. This is a catalogue-style book, not one that you really "read," but I enjoyed browsing several pages each night in bed, highlighting gems like "Fox News did to our parents what they thought video games would do to us" (Ryan Scott); "Lead us not into Penn Station" (from Saul Bellow's "Herzog") and Clive James' description of Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a brown condom full of walnuts." The book is full of so many fantastic quotes that it really is a disservice to cite just three here--read it and enjoy the rest!

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a disappointment. Be ready for a long slog through vulgarity offered up as clever writing. Perhaps some of these quotes would be clever if I were immersed in the context, but most just seem flat and mean-spirited. I can appreciate a good insult if it's witty and sharply insightful, but I didn't find any here. And if you're looking for inspiration, look elsewhere.

[JHM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note to self: Never buy quote books, only borrow them.

I'm reasonable sure that the only reason this book was published is that compiler Dwight Garner is a book critic for the New York Times.

I also suspect that the only people who are going to truly enjoy this book are Garner's family, friends, and fans - because the only thing unique about it is that it is a reflection of his psyche. If, like me, you don't know or care about him, or are not a book snob, there is no reason to prefer this volume over any other collection of quotes to be found in other books or just browsing the internet.

Yes, there are jewels here. I highlighted a dozen or more quotations to steal for my own collection. And there was craft involved in ordering them in topics areas which flow from one to the next. But overall. . . I pushed through to the end, but almost didn't bother.

If you are a quote collector you might want to buy it. But you also might prefer to borrow this from the library or find a used paperback version somewhere.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wide ranging selection of quotations from many and diverse sources:
-some humorous, Don Rickles -"Make yourself at home, Frank [Sinatra] -- hit somebody,"
-some with a slice of humor but poignant, Art Spiegelman [author of Maus] interview - "'Don't you think that a comic book about Auschwitz is in bad taste?' 'No, I thought Auschwitz was in bad taste.'"
-and some more seriously on the mark, Margaret Atwood - “Men often ask me, Why are your female characters so paranoid? It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”

I felt that there is also a lot of chaff here with the wheat and I would have found it more useful as a reference book if it had been sorted topically or had some sort of a thematic reference table.

[PeterO · Rating 5 out of 5]

You have to read this with a different state of mind than with most books.
The quotations are not randomly listed but clustered so that makes reading them not unlike Twitter or even Tinder.
Nope
Nope
Nope
Yes
Yes
Nope
Yes
etc.
While many of them did not resonate with me, many others did and I have enjoyed sharing them with friends.
A great book to have next to the crapper; you can read as much as your business takes.

[William Dury · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t treat him like God. It wigs him out. Don’t dive into his soul, he finds that insulting.
—Advice given to interviewers by Bob Dylan’s office

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.
—Graham Greene

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats and one always secretes too much jelly.
—Virginia Woolf

Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It’s a tough world.
—James Fenton, in The Times (London)

My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.
—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.
—Bob Dylan and Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”

I sing in five or six different voices.
—Axl Rose

The most important of the voices, though, is Devil Woman.
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, on Axl Rose, “Pulphead”

The premonition of apocalypse springs eternal in the human breast.
—Irving Kristol, “On the Democratic Idea in America”

Eve Babitz quoted generously. You gotta love that.

[Sara Laor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is so bad, it's the first book I've returned to B&N. The only thing commending it is that it was printed in the United States. The quotes are inane. A book like this should be uplifting and thought-provoking, so it widely missed the mark. Oh, and of course, it has the requisite anti-Trump quotes, which at this point only serve to date the book to the 'TDS Years' without having to look at the publishing date.

[Nan · Rating 2 out of 5]

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner shares his "commonplace" book-- a collection of phrases or quotations that have captured his fancy throughout his prodigious reading life. Although such compilations can be intriguing, they can also be a bore, especially when you have different tastes and the material has no particular arrangement. You might enjoy a random dip into this, but otherwise it's a bit of a slog. Actual rating: 1.5

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like reading Garner's reviews and listening to him on the NYT Book Review podcast and this collection was quite a disappointment. There are definitely a few gems scattered throughout, and the ending is funny, but overall this was a bit unpleasant and overly populated by Auberon Waugh, Christopher Hitchens, and The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin.

[Loree · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good compilation of random quotes, in no particular organized fashion. More like a stream of consciousness. Would be a fun reference to keep but it’s not like you could find a particular quote on a subject due to the layout. It would definitely be a highlighter and post-it note situation but since I checked it out from the library, I obviously didn’t do that.

[Owen Cantrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end,” Richard Brautigan

A somewhat thematic and somewhat surrealist progression of quotations, aphorisms, and some words. It’s better than a coffee table book, but you can read it between bus stops.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything I can read easily in my 15 min breaks @ work is a win. I enjoyed the quotes & learning that a commonplace book was a thing. I started keeping 1 in high school & did through college. It was nice to know I’m not entirely bananas

[Dipra Lahiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sentences and phrases culled from a lifetime of reading, which go beyond the standard books of quotations, and are funny, moving and sometimes profound. A book to be dipped into every now and then.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much Stanley Elkin and yet not enough.

[John Bond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book of 2020/2021. Great casual read. A whole new breed of a quotation book. Highly recommend for some fresh faces, and some deep ad some funny insights into present day life.

[Sharen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific fun!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a cleverly organized collection, but it loses a star for continually attributing quotations to the actors who spoke the lines instead of the writers who wrote them.

[Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fun and engaging collection. And so very different from the usual quotations in other collections.

[Nikola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of citations from past to the present days.

[N Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a perfect companion

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book to keep handy in a guest bathroom.

[John Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book in the product of such a particular, individual sensibility that the many readers who don't share that sensibility will be left cold -- or be enraged, particularly if they are easily offended by pithy opinions often laced with profanity. On the other hand, those who tend to appreciate intelligent provocation; who experience good writing as a perfectly crafted six-word sentence as opposed to a florid description; for whom the thought of a "mean wit" provokes a twinkle instead of a frown; who value a broad, liberal education for the ability it brings to pick up allusions; and who, in their heart of hearts, believe that the world would be better off if the literate ran it, are very likely to love it.

As he explains in the preface, Dwight Garner has been reading for forty years, and for all that time he's been collecting sentences that caught his eye. This used to be a common thing to do, so that the collection was known as a "commonplace book." (My own commonplace book is a collection of text files dating as far back as the 1990s.) A commonplace book is quite different from a book of quotations, which is a reference book of mostly well-known sayings and writings. It's necessarily personal and its nature is to record the the startling rather than the revered. This book focuses on what I'd call "the low intellectual": it tends to short, often obscene, usually emotional, sayings and phrases from the very smart. It's common for the same names to recur. Clive James. Evelyn Waugh. Mencken. Hitchens. But almost anybody might be represented, even George W. Bush. (I'll let you find it.)

I read this book a few pages at a time over a period of months. It always made me feel smarter and more alive. Because it aims to provoke, I suppose there's a lot for people to hate about it, but I can't help but feel that if you hate this book, there's an important part of me that you must really hate, too.

(Obligatory gripe: As in much lesser collections of saying and quotes, source documents are often unspecified, which frustrates my desire to find the full meal from which I was given a small bite. Neither is there a subject index, making it harder to find entries that I'd like to quote myself.)

[Nicholas Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dwight Garner is one of my favorite critics. His reviews are filled with choice pruned quotes. It’s fun that he put a collection of them together for this book. Getting it sent to me some few years ago from a former CUNY teaching colleague/neighbor was a nice surprise - thanks Kate! I remember well talking of Garner’s reviews on our long, late-night commutes home to Washington Heights. And how nice to see some quotes from Kate’s father, a former writer for the New Yorker, included in this volume, too.

Garner says that he is not a big fan of books of quotes and he acknowledges that many quotes sound stale, with ‘a taxidermied air, as if they’re self-consciously aimed at posterity.’

So his own book of quotes then—many of them appealingly unruly—is a way of saying thank you to the writers who’ve brought him pleasure over the years, and to ‘point the way to other books.’ His collection is arranged haphazardly ‘by feel’ and in a way that quotes may ‘speak to one another and perhaps throw off unexpected sparks.’

Here are some of my favorites:

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.
~Charlie Parker

Fat, forty, and back.
~Sex Pistols reunion tour slogan

No smoking in bars. What’s next, no fucking in bars?
~Kim Cattrall, in Sex in the City

He had a mother who was less a mother than a gypsy curse.
~Roberto Bolaño, ‘Between Parenthesis’

In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
~Bertrand Russell, ‘The Triumph of Stupidity’

Except for socially, you’re my role model.
~Joan Cusack, to Holly Hunter, in Broadcast News

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
~J.D. Salinger, ‘A Girl I knew’

Say what you will about Charles Manson; he really empowered women to pursue excellence in traditionally male-dominated fields.
~Caitlan Flanagan, in The Atlantic

Don’t treat him like God. It wigs him out. Don’t dive into his soul. He finds it insulting.
~Advice given to interviewers by Bob Dylan’s office

He may be dead; or, he may be teaching English.
~Cormac McCarthy

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.
~Christopher Hitchens

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think universities stifle writers. I think they don’t stifle enough of them.
~Flannery O’Connor, interview

You meet people in your family you’d never happen to run into otherwise.
~Deborah Eisenberg, ‘Twilight of the Superheroes’

Too dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for L.A.
~Waylon Jennings, album title

It’s every woman’s tragedy that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator.
~Angela Carter

I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.
~Laura Dern, to Kyle MacLacklan, in Blue Velvet

I was the kind of pothead who looked like a small cloud being propelled by legs.
~Clive James, ‘Latest Readings’

People with no upper body strength, who read poetry. These are my people.
~Caitlan Moran, ‘How to Build a Girl’

Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers for your reinventions.
~Colson Whitehead, ‘The Colossus of New York

[The Atlantic]

"Wonderfully eclectic and ecumenical, saucier and more bristling than one might expect from a book of this nature—if you leave it in the bathroom, someone’s going to get upset—Garner’s anthology is a great resource, and probably a kind of shadow biography of the anthologist himself. No sections, no headings, but an organic thematic clustering: As you tumble happily along through the gathered blurts, hexes, and literary nostrums, you find that Padgett Powell, Michael Ondaatje, and Charles Dickens are all suddenly talking about oysters. While you’re waiting for somebody to give this book to you, buy it and give it to somebody else." —James Parker

https://www.theatlantic.com/summer-re...