Column excerpts and quotes from George Frazier

ON FRED ASTAIRE:

“He comes to us across the decades, forever youthful, forever a little foolish as he acts his woebegone way (though always engagingly and often endearinglyly) through all the mixups of all the mistaken-identity plots; forever fashionable, so that watching his old movies late at night on television, we, too, feel forever young, at least for an exhilarating and rejuvenating little while. To marvel at the miracle of his movements — ah, that first loping giant step, that stride, as if he were about to soar into space — is to shake off the shackles of the years. The man is flabbergasting.’’

DUENDE:

“It is not easy to explain what duende is, except to observe that when someone or something has it, we feel icy fingers running up and down our spine. Why does ‘Huckleberry Finn’ have so much duende, and ‘Tom Sawyer’ so little? Certainly it is not measured in terms of person’s surpassing skills, for if that were the case, then Bart Starr, say, would be all duende. Yet he isn’t — he is merely one of the greatest quarterbacks of all autumn assignments.

Nor does duende have anything at all to do with honor or integrity or valor, either, for Hitler had it — just as Mussolini did not, just as John Dillinger was all duende, while the Mafia, at least since Lucky Luciano, is not.

Duende isn’t merely class, or for that matter, just style either … yet I cannot , offhand think of anyone who has duende who does not also have style. And to say that duende is merely charisma or panache or flair is rather to demean it, for while it is certainly all those things, it is the nth power of them.’’

ANOTHER MAN’S POISON:

“All those books by Yippies only go to prove how right they were when they said that words are useless.’’

“Calling themselves The Supremes does seem to be taking a lot for granted, don’t you think?’’

“By the time I’ve ripped out all the postcards, I’m too damned tired to read any magazine.’’