Has urban commentator David Brooks "cleverly packaged himself" as right-winger with a kinder, gentler sensitivity?
"In On Paradise Drive, Brooks looks at how the great American middle stratum lives (top- and bottom-income people are left for another time). But this is no Travels With Charley, for it is written by a man who, though he seems to have bounced about here and there, has no eye for the telling detail and no ear for the colorful quote. Though Brooks humbly likens his writing to Twain's and Mencken's, the best you can say for him as a writer is that he's fought the English language to a draw. Whereas Twain on the warpath was a sharpshooting rifleman and Mencken laid about with the broadsword, Brooks's literary weapon is the tweezers. Follicle by follicle, he snaps the hairs out. Painful but not so entertaining."
Thanks to Laura Kranz
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