THE CARROT OF CARICATURE
by Charlie Finch



Now that David Levine is dead, I guess another reassurance is down the drain: leafing through the New York Review of Books, first examining all the obscure titles from the university presses, then examining the index to see which erudite summation of a new tome to read so that one does not have to buy said book, spotting a familiar byline (Joan Didion, Garry Wills), sighing with satisfaction at the inevitable David Levine caricature of the bylined author, hoping that another book on Richard Nixon has been released to occasion the reprint of a Levine classic of the trickster, bypassing the always dull Simon Schama or Louis Menand, then on to the spiteful letters section and the pitiful personals from intellectuals in Nantucket.

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