Fame

My friend has just loaned me a book Fame in the 20th Century by Clive James, it as a gem of literary wit, with such majestic lines as:

Arnie described as looking like a “rubber life raft which has been randomly tied up with string before being suddenly inflated and dipped in liquid bronze.”

And “As the slaughter (World War I) commenced, the news was dominated by nineteenth-century-style moustaches. Behind them were men in charge, but you could hardly see them….Kaiser Wilhelm was the chief German Moustache….Britain’s Prime Ministerial moustache was Loyd George.

“(Rudolph) Valentino was equipped with a smoldering glance that could reach all the way to the cheap seat and scorch the spit curl on a flapper’s forehead to a frazzled pretzel.”