… Kubrick a planned and prodigal expenditure of resources.

She feels she can never truly write well because she lacks Lila鈥檚 wild, prodigal spirit. Lila, she thinks, 鈥減ossessed intelligence and didn鈥檛 put it to use but, rather, wasted it, like a great lady for whom all the riches in the world are merely a sign of vulgarity.鈥�

A lot of artists in America tend to be self-deprecating futilitarians, because we鈥檝e grown up in a culture in which art doesn鈥檛 matter except, occasionally, as a high-end investment.

For it is significant that much of the work of Bierce seems to be that of what he would have called a futilitarian, that he seldom seems able to find a suitable field for his satire, a foeman worthy of such perfect steel as he brings ot he encounter …