In retrospect, both JD Salinger (no 72 in this series) and Saul Bellow, who declared their originality at the beginning of the 1950s, stand head-and-shoulders above a rising generation of young contenders, from Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal to Kurt Vonnegut, and James Salter.
Originality, she declared, is the greatest quality one can have or achieve.
Federalists responded by casting doubt on Jefferson's authorship or originality, and by emphasizing that independence was declared by the whole Congress, with Jefferson as just one member of the drafting committee.
When the film was shown at the New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art, Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, declared it "uncomplicatedly entertaining" with "the power of honesty and originality" as well as "a buoyant, mischievous spirit".
Baer declared Cerf and Beard the winners, saying that they won on three grounds: "Originality, aptness, and the judge has been reached".
His self-assured belief in his inordinate originality first animated and then poisoned his relationship with Claire Bloom who, having declared that she wanted "to spend my life with this remarkable man", divorced him in 1995, after years of provocation.
And, just in case that hasn't sunk in, 30 pages later, he is again declared "the best for work rate, for rhetorical skills, for humour, for insight... for technical originality and sheer blind bravery".
No reader, she once declared, "will be able to detect any word or hint from my father that it was upon the Mystery alone that he relied for the interest and originality of his idea.
It is the original kind of originality.
Originality, pure originality, is overrated.
Originality is dangerous.
