My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.
I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.
How did females become 'guys?' How did everyone become 'guys?' Remember, too, that a male guy was something of a scoundrel. And a wise guy was a fresh kid, a whippersnapper. In its most other famous evocation, men in Brooklyn said 'youse guys.' Damon Runyon referred to hustlers, gamblers, and other nefarious types as guys.
Can a great artist be mean-spirited, grasping, harsh to his family, violent in his emotions, vindictive in his hatreds, an all-purpose scoundrel? If our test cases are the likes of Wagner, Picasso, and, let me say, Dickens, the answer is a resounding yes.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
I'm an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.
A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.
A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.
