Aesthetically at odds, these two genres of mass humor form a Janus face of American culture. Stand-up is a surviving bastion of in...dividual expression. The comedian confronts the audience with his or her personality and wins celebration--the highest form of acceptance--or is scorned and rebuffed as a pitiable outsider. The heckler, the mood of the audience, or the temperature of the room cannot always be handled through quality control. Even when presented electronically, the jokes of a stand-up monologue cannot be underlined by canned laughter without the manipulation thoroughly exposing itself.... The sitcom, by contrast, is the technology of the assembly-line brought to art. Even when live audiences are used, their reactions are "sweetened" with carefully calculated titters, chortles, and guffaws. Large sums of investment capital must be assembled to produce a sitcom; all factors must be controlled by recognized experts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A fact is like a sack--it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feeli...ngs that caused it in the first place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sky calls To the deaf earth. The proverbial disarray... Of morning corrects itself as you stand up. You are wearing a text.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to wha...t? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You can't stand up against me. You haven't got the strength. You'll do as I say. I demand that you give up this man. I demand that... you send him away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,... Until the lengthening wings break into fireLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »