escalier

What the French call “esprit d’escalier,” or staircase wit, to refer to those moments when the perfect rejoinder is thought of only after it’s too late, is not an experience that commonly afflicts his hyper-articulate crew.

This is especially irritating with regard to Kaur's Bela, who comes off as her creator's wish fulfillment double, the star of endless esprit d'escalier daydreams made real, as opposed to a unique creation.

Regarding the girl’s comment, “Why do you think that is?” or “What would you like to read books about?” both would have been helpful responses, but that’s esprit de l’escalier—I probably would have been rendered mute in the moment too.

Who has not, after a social event, lost sleep in what the French term l’esprit de l’escalier, the spirit of the staircase—the belated awareness of what we should have said or done but didn’t think of until we were on the stairs on our way out.

Throughout this soliloquy of self-aggrandizement, MF sips toilet wine and shanks The Holding Pen into the body of America’s hippest and most cerebral culture, “a critical escalier of faddish hermeneutics, correctional epistemologies, and Pinter-esque moments of silence during Slate podcasts.”