It is, he said, "a first-rate work of art", one whose "vigour and delicacy animate the loveliness of existence".
"Dangerous Nation" is a first-rate work of history, based on prodigious reading and enlivened by a powerful prose style.
It is this depth that makes "Boy21" more than a first-rate novel fueled by basketball; it's a first-rate work of art.
If it is not a truism it ought to be: the best work of a second-rate writer is almost always better than the second-rate work of a first-rate one.
Anatole Broyard said in these pages that it "may be a third-rate work of art, but it's a first-rate outrage to our sensibilities".
In one such memo-to-self, he had asked, "Why am I not writing this book faster?" And he had answered, using the second person: "You're demonstrating concern for readers in not burdening them with bad writing.... There's so much bad writing out there, why add to it?" Yes? "The bookshelves of America are lined with the second-rate work of first-rate writers".
I find great art so uplifting that if I have not seen any first-rate works of art for a few days I notice the difference in my mood.
THE ART OF THE STEAL: Inside the Sotheby's-Christie's Auction House Scandal By Christopher Mason Putnam ($26.95, hardcover) The room was packed, partly due to feverish interest in the 16 Havemeyer pictures and in the other first-rate works of art in the sale by Monet, Klee, Picasso, Léger and Renoir.
He wrote: At the risk of going over-the-top, I would put my own view so strongly as to say that, these days, use of the passive voice in a research paper is more often than not, the hallmark of second rate work (May 2002, 2).
It should be said that many of the most successful of these works on paper are by people who have a long record of first-rate work behind them and see no reason to chase after new fads and fancies.
Audi, who has done first-rate work as the artistic director of the Netherlands Opera, failed to give dramatic shape to this clutter, and maybe didn't even try, given the waywardness of his collaborators.
