Review by Booklist Review
Do you wanna hear a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Katharine Hepburn posed nude! Madonna learned about sex as a girl from girls! Elmore Leonard drank like a fish! And Barbara Streisand's least favorite subject?--"One thing's for sure, I hate talking about myself." Yup, these revelations and titillations of fluctuating veracity but constant hilarity reverberate from end to end of the latest compendium from quotation pack rat Winokur. The utterances of these celebrities, mostly show-biz types, peer in on their genetic proclivity toward self-explanation/justification, be the speaker an admitted dolt ("Brain the size of a pea, I've got"--Princess Diana) or a deadpan comedian ("Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as its chief obstacle"--Jack Parr). Now who cares if in the ranks of literary quality, quote books rate high in stylistic turpitude, low in mental strain, and first in the hearts of serious tabloid readers everywhere: all we the people demand is the form's reigning demagogue to harangue us with guffaw-ridden badinage. Winokur's gleanings, arranged in his inimitable and popular Portable Curmudgeon, are both vapid and trenchant, intentional and inadvertent, so invoke Our Lady of Perpetual Circulation to protect us from thievery! ~--Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
