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Helen Vendler
HELEN VENDLER

The Art of Criticism No. 3
Interviewed by Henri Cole
Issue 141, Winter 1996
View a manuscript page

From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
I wondered how you felt being depicted in The New York Times recently by a caricaturist as a head on a tank.

VENDLER
I thought it was very funny. My son, much amused, said, “My mother is a tank.” The odd thing for me in seeing it is that I write mostly appreciative reviews, so a tank armed with a phallic howitzer, or whatever my fountain pen was supposed to be, seemed to me not quite the right representation for the kind of admiring reviews that I normally write. However, since a female who expresses herself decisively seems to this world someone armed with ammunition, it’s probably fair enough.
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