paranoia as a form of intellectual egotism

David Denby's "Killing Joke: The Coen brothers' twists and turns" in this week's New Yorker is a wonderful review of their oeuvre. I'm so impressed sometimes with the way critics can put so many ideas and observations into words in such a way that they aren't just penetrating the work but are enhancing it. I mean, they go into the work at the same time that they bring it out of itself. If that makes any sense. I, clearly, am no David Denby.

Here are two things he says that I think are extremely well-put.

About a character in The Big Lebowski:

"Many of the Coen's idiots are obsessives, but Walter... is so fiercely methodical in his false syllogisms that you begin to understand paranoia as a form of intellectual egotism."

That's pretty brilliant. Less dazzlingly, about Fargo:

"The Coens grew up in Minnesota and believed that something strange was going on there -- a regional verbal tic that masked a collective nervous breakdown." (emphasis added)