A quote for God, country, and Yale?

[Garson O'Toole]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:46 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Fwd: A quote for God, country, and Yale?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From another list, a possible quotation for the
> YBQ (I'll be embarrassed if it's there already).
>
> (At least the soup can did not burst and spatter the wall.)
>
> Joel
>
>>From: Andrew Brown <lists at C18.NET>
>>Subject: [C18-L] Voltaire for 4.5 million sterling
>>To: C18-L at LISTS.PSU.EDU
>>
>>Sotheby's kindly send me a mail whenever they have some Voltaire
>>coming up for sale. This morning's message is illustrated by a can of
>>soup, and Voltaire is indeed there, behind the scenes :
>>
>>"After seeing the soup cans, Henry Geldzahler, director of the
>>Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York at the time, declared to
>>Warhol: "You are the Voltaire of America. You are giving America just
>>what it deserves ­ a can of soup on the wall!" (cited in: Andy Warhol
>>and Pat Hackett, Popism, London 2007, p. 45)"
>>
>>AB

Thanks for forwarding this quotation, Joel. The volume "POPism: the
Warhol Sixties" by Andy Warhol is in preview mode in Google Books.
Below is a link to the passage containing the quote. I suspect that
Sotheby's has made a mistake and is propagating a misattribution. I
think that the author, Warhol, is claiming that the words were spoken
by Taylor Mead, "one of the first underground film stars", and not by
Henry.

If you have a moment you can follow the link and attempt to determine
the identity of the speaker be reading several paragraphs. I would
appreciate your comment or the comments of other readers.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ue1sTYpUbdsC&q=%22can+of+soup%22#v=snippet&
http://goo.gl/E0QEF

Garson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org