This Week The Was That Were

Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop -- it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word. They're less comfortable with novels. They don't have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It's sad.
- John Updike, who died this week at age 76

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- Simpsons executive producer Al Jean, commenting on Nancy Cartwright using her Bart Simpson voice for a robocall promoting Scientology

In an emergency situation, which part of you would you eat first?
-Stephen Colbert interviewing Sir Paul McCartney this week