Quotation pinched from somone else's journal

[robinturner]

All life in New York is purely artificial & affected -- values are forced & arbitrary, mental fashions are capricious, pathological, or commercial rather than authentic, & literary activity & conversation are motivated by a shallow pose, a sophistical concealment of ignorance, & a morbidly charlatanic egotism & cheap assertiveness ... The "aesthetes" of New York are less interested in art & beauty than in themselves; & their smart badinage & discussion savor much more of psychological exhibitionism & social gesture than of actual artistic insight, vision & devotion.

Is this

(a) Jean Baudrillard
(b) Umberto Eco
(c) H.P. Lovecraft
(d) Oscar Wilde
(e) An anonymous Situationist?

Comments

[katminnaar.livejournal.com]

I have no idea whatsoever, but my [purely random] guess is Oscar Wilde.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

(f) someone who doesn't know how to have fun. New York was genune and raw and ugly and shimmering and brilliant food an dhot ghetto sex and bum pee smell on the subways and on and on. If they were hangin out with the aesthetes it was their own dam fault for not being able to find life with a roadmap and a miner's lamp.

And while that counts as cheap assertiveness, it's spoken with the authority of somone who lived in NYC both as a homeless person and on a $200k/year salary.

Yes, I'm a little defensive about my city. :)

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I can't answer, because it would be cheating.

[hyperina.livejournal.com]

eco?