The Art of Quotation (Part III)

Portrait of Madonna by Andrea Ventura

Joanna Biggs, in her superb “ ‘Give Me Joy’ ” (The New York Review of Books, May 23, 2024), a review of Mary Gabriel’s Madonna: A Rebel Life, writes,

The image of the whore was crystallized in Susan Seidelman’s 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan: Madonna played the eponymous Susan, strolling East Seventh Street and eating cheese puffs like an “indolent, trampy goddess,” as Pauline Kael put it in The New Yorker. 

The quote is from Kael’s “Passion” (The New Yorker, April 22, 1985; included in her wonderful 1985 collection State of the Art), in which she says, “Nobody comes through in the movie except Madonna, who comes through as Madonna (she moves regally, an indolent, trampy goddess)....” 

Kael’s “indolent, trampy goddess” is very good. Biggs’ “eating cheese puffs like an ‘indolent, trampy goddess’ ” is brilliant! Biggs takes Kael’s phrase and makes it her own. 

Postscript: Biggs’ piece contains another inspired line: 

Halfway through Sex there is a beautifully composed, and hot, picture of her leaning over a full-length mirror masturbating, watching her own cheeks bloom pink with orgasm. 

I nominate that as the best sentence of 2024 (so far). Biggs is one of today’s best critics. I’d like to see more of her in The New Yorker.