Dallas Topics

New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

A sceptic finds dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn’t.
—Clive James (b. 1939)

If a foreign country doesn’t look like a middle-class suburb of dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)