He became, to use his word, “unapologetic” – in taste, in tone, in everything. - Wyatt Mason on F.S.

[F.S.] has made the brutal postmodern calculation that cynicism is the only defensible moral position. Any other relation to suffering sentimentalizes pain. His is an aesthetics that avoids aestheticizing human grief, sometimes in favor of aestheticizing human meanness. - Dan Chiasson on F.S.

He was what somewhat said of Nixon: “on old man’s idea of a young man.” - Dan Chiasson on F.S.

The subordination of properly first-order moral claims to second-order metaphorical illustrations, no matter how rowdy or rancorous the tone, crosses a line few poets wish to cross.

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