Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Brewer’s Curious Titles: From Here to Eternity

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The first novel (1951) by James Jones (1921-77), who was serving in the US infantry in Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Twice promoted and twice reduced to private, he fought at Guadalcanal and was wounded in the head by a mortar fragment. The novel, which won a National Book Award, draws on his own experiences in Hawaii and caused a sensation for its expose of army brutality and its outspokenness about sex and military mores. The film (1952) was a slick, sexually oblique version directed by Fred Zinnemann. The title comes from the poem ‘The Gentlemen Rankers’ (1889) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) about oppressed junior ranks:

‘Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we.'”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Fresco

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Called ‘buon fresco’ or ‘true fresco,’ the technique of painting on moist lime plaster with water-based pigments.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Brewer’s Curious Titles: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A film (1991) directed by by Jon Avnet and with a screenplay by Fannie Flagg, adapted from her own novel. Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife, finds inspiration in the story told her by Ninny Threadgoode, an octogenarian lady in an old folk’s home. Her story from her youth concerns a relative, Idgie Threadgoode, an early feminist, who many years before had run the cafe in Whistle Stop, Alabama. Idgie rescues her friend Ruth from an abusive marriage, and Ruth joins her at the cafe, cooking such Southern delights as Fried Green Tomatoes.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Rejections: The Great Days by John Dos Passos

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Optical Mixing

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Anagram

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Rotten Reviews: Ulysses by James Joyce

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Term of Art: Gerund

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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The Algonquin Wits: Heywood Broun Completes a Questionnaire

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Wee Willie Keeler on Where to Hit the Ball

Posted on July 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

“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.

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