Self-esteem as French would have it / MON 11-18-13 / Facial socket / Milo of Verdict / Center square of bingo card / Sea body of water south of Italy / Charles Lamb's pen name

Constructor: Edgar Fontaine

Relative difficulty: Challenging (3:26, which is très high for me)

THEME: Add an apostrophe S and turn a celebrity's name into a possessive phrase in which the celebrity's first name is imagined as the last name of some different celebrity or some nonsense like that that could've gone on forever but mercifully didn't

Theme answers:

• 20A: Part of a bushel belonging to Dick? (GREGORY'S PECK)
• 34A: Car belonging to Rex? (HARRISON'S FORD)
• 41A: Lite beer belonging to Bea? (ARTHUR'S MILLER)
• 55A: Rock belonging to Ariel? (SHARON'S STONE)

Word of the Day: AMOUR-PROPRE (26D: Self-esteem, as the French would have it) —

Amour-propre (French, "self-love") is a concept in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that denotes a self-love that depends upon the opinion of others. Rousseau contrasts it with amour de soi, which also means "self-love", but which does not involve seeing oneself as others see one. According to Rousseau, amour de soi is more primitive and is compatible with wholeness and happiness, while amour-propre arose only with the appearance of society and renders human beings incapable of being happy within society. (wikipedia)

You can see how bad this is, so I'm not going to waste my breath (much). As a friend of mine just noted, the "false-possessive" is a hackneyed theme. I would add that this particular theme goes beyond merely hackneyed into the realm of the ridiculously simplistic. The theme could theoretically go on forever and (this is important) still Never Be Funny / Clever / Interesting. You're adding "'S" why? To what end? Who knows? The pronunciation change involved in 55A—who *$&%ing cares? Go for it! Clearly all standards of consistency, cleverness, polish, etc. are out the window, so go ahead, trash the place. I realize that I have been disliking a lot of puzzles lately, but please understand that it is not without a Ton of consultation with other people, mostly constructors, all much more discerning than I. I'm not going to come out here and say the puzzle is increasingly terrible—or, at minimum, well below what should be the standards of the NYT—without making sure others are seeing what I'm seeing. And they are. In spades. Oh, and we haven't even gotten to EYEPIT, which … really? And then the inexcusably lazy fill. Your LESSEES, your UTAHANS, your RATA TATA INST OPER etc. On a Monday? With a decidedly non-demanding theme? I'm going to continue assuming that this is just some prolonged bad patch, a funk from which the NYT crossword puzzle will eventually, at least partially, emerge. But right now, things look dire.


Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash out my EYEPITs.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld