“I am rather offended by what seems to me quite gratuitous passages dealing with sex acts and natural functions.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
“The involuntary mixing of juxtaposed colors by the eye and brain. Thus, at a certain distance, juxtaposed dabs of red and yellow pigment produce the sensation of orange. The colors seen by optical mixing appear clearer and more brilliant than those obtained by mixing colors on a palette.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“The rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to make another word or phrase. Anagrams are a common feature of crossword puzzles and are sometimes used by authors to conceal proper names. Drab is an anagram of bard; the name of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) is an anagram of nowhere.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
“I finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire…. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky.”
Virginia Woolf, in her diary
“That the book possesses literary importance, except as a tour de force, is hard to believe. If we are to have the literature of mere consciousness there are numerous examples from the later Henry James to Virginia Woolf which import to consciousness a higher intrinsic value and achieve the forms of art.”
Springfield Republican reviewing the American edition 1934
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“A traditional term for a VERBAL NOUN, in English a word ending in –ing: visiting in They appreciate my visiting their parents regularly. Like a noun, it can be introduced by the genitive my (compare I visit their parents). Some object to the non-genitive usage and avoid at least for names and pronouns, preferring They appreciate Bill’s visiting their parents to They appreciate Bill visiting their parents and They appreciate my visiting their parents to They appreciate me visiting their parents.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“One morning, finding a self-analysis questionnaire on his desk, Broun included some of the questions in that day’s column:
‘What is my occupation? Newspaperman.’
‘Am I making a success of it? There seems to be a decided difference of opinion.’
‘What is my character and reputation? Unreliable and charming.’
‘What do other men think of me? Unreliable.’
‘What do I think of myself? Charming.’
‘Am I cleanly? Very much so in the summer.’
‘Punctual? No.’
‘Courteous? To a fault.
‘Have I any object in life? Yes, I want to be a writer.’
‘Am I on my way? Not precipitately.'”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, questioning/inquiry
“Hit ’em where they ain’t.”
William Henry “Wee Willie” Keeler (U.S. baseball player, 1872-1923)
Quoted in Brooklyn Eagle, 29 July 1901
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged games/sports, high-interest materials, readings/research
“The intentional or unintentional expression of a word or idea that implies more than one meaning and usually leaves uncertainty in the reader. William Empson, in his Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), outlined and defined seven different kinds of verbal nuance. He maintained that language functioning with artistic complexity connotes as much and often more than it denotes.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Collective term for the art of a variety of ancient cultures (ca. 2800 B.C. to ca. 1400 B.C.) on the islands and along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The most important were Cycladic, Minoan (on the island of Crete), and Mycenaean (on the coast of mainland Greece).”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“A novel by Charles Dickens (1812-70), published in 1860-1. The ‘expectations’ are those of the central character, Pip, who starts as a simple country boy. As he grows older he receives money and hints that he might expect much more; he sets himself up as a gentleman and disowns his humble beginnings. He believes the elderly Miss Havisham is his benefactor, but it turns out to be Magwitch, the convict he helped to escape as a child. He is spoilt by his expectations, but when penury strikes he returns to a life of honest toil.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities, readings/research
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