A Deadline and a Borrowed Bit of Genius

The editors here at the Sangamon Reporter are relentless taskmasters worthy of a classic Dickensian villain with their grinding, ceaseless deadlines, insistence for hot scoops and insatiable desire for new copy in an effort to satisfy their ravenous, but always appreciative (and discerning) public. 

Of course, I jest. 

In the spirit of avoiding actual labor, I had an epiphany: why write an original piece when I can just ride the coattails of a true literary genius? Reader and author win. I could just draft in their brilliance and maybe nobody would notice I offer zero added value; the journalistic equivalent of using Hamburger Helper to turn a pound of beef into an entire meal. Ideally, this author would be someone who is eminently quotable. Hmmm?

We’ve all met people who can toss off quotes at precisely the right moment to make a point or enhance our understanding of a particular issue. “If I’m not mistaken it was Laertes who famously said: Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.” I am not that guy. I do however know that the Arby’s slogan is: “We Have the Meats!” but sadly this has yet to be of value in the daily course of events.  

Oscar Wilde who despite being faced with unimaginable challenges, spent his entire life dispensing countless quotable witticisms, observational drolleries, and pearls of wisdom with the precision, force and strategy of a prize fighter. He was possessed with an acerbic wit, a singular flair and command of the written word that is still unparalleled 126 years after his death. 

Wilde’s mellifluous, fluid style rejected gritty realism in favor of an absurdist, satirical, and decadent prose that almost had the rhythm and cadence of a song.  If you read The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband they flowed like stinging social commentary set to music. His epigrams are deceptively light, paradoxically biting, and devastatingly efficient.  And there are hundreds.  How did the man have time to do anything else but walk around tossing off razor-sharp zingers?  Here are several: 

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

• I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

• Only the shallow know themselves.

• Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

• The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

• In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

• The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

• The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

• You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

• [Upon arriving at US Customs in 1882] I have nothing to declare except my genius.

• Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

• The problem with socialism is that it wastes too many evenings on meetings.

Oscar Wilde was so perfectly meta that he even wrote a quote criticizing quotes: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” I say: steal only from the best. True to form, he anticipated this artistic thievery, once boasting: “Of course I plagiarize. It is the privilege of the appreciative man.”  With that in mind then, to steal from Wilde is not a lack of creativity, but a badge of excellent taste.