“At a newsmen’s banquet President Harding appeared as guest speaker and delivered what struck Broun as the epitome of cliche-ridden ghost-written addresses. After a brief moment of respectful applause, Broun rose from his chair and cried ‘Author! Author!'”
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, readings/research, united states history
Several years ago, when I had just started dealing with the problem of homophone confusion among the students I serve, I whipped up this basic learning support on three of the most commonly misused homophones, to wit, two, too and to; your and you’re; and there their, and they’re. I need to emphasize the modifier basic here, because this is about as basic as it gets. Over time I will post more sophisticated versions of this.
In fact, I almost just tossed this. But since I have 13 GB of storage on this website, and only a little over 2 GB of accumulated material (which is nonetheless about 14,000 documents), I figure I can afford to duplicate a few things, and place a few things that haven’t exactly reached the peak of their development. In fact, that’s exactly what you have here.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Reference
Tagged homophones, learning supports
“(Latin ‘god out of the machine’) In Greek drama a god was lowered out onto the stage by a mechane so that he could get the hero out of difficulties and untangle the plot. Euripides used it a good deal. Sophocles and Aeschylus avoided it. Bertolt Brecht parodied the abuse of the device at the end of his Threepenny Opera. Today this phrase is applied to any unanticipated intervener who resolves a difficult situation, in any literary genre.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992
“A satire in fable form by George Orwell (1903-1950) published in 1945 and depicting a totalitarian regime like that of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The story describes how the animals, accompanied by the slogan ‘Four legs good, two legs bad,’ overthrow their human oppressors. However, the pigs, by cunning treachery and ruthlessness, come to dominate the more honest, gullible, and hard-working animals. Their ultimate slogan is: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ The leader of the pigs is Napoleon, representing Stalin, and at the end the pigs are in cahoots with the humans, even beginning to totter around on two legs. An animated film of the novel appeared in 1955.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“A concept is that which is understood by a term, particularly a predicate. To possess a concept is to be able to deploy a term expressing it in making judgements: the ability connects with such things as recognizing when the term applied, and being able to tell the consequences of its application. The term “idea” was formerly used in the same way, but is avoided because of its associations with subjective and mental imagery, which may be irrelevant to the possession of a concept. In the semantics of Frege, a concept is the reference of a predicate, and cannot be referred to by as subjective term.”
Excerpted from: Blackburn, Simon. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
“At a conservative estimate, one million dollars will be spent by American readers for this book. They will get for their money 34 pages of permanent value. These 34 pages tell of a massacre happening in a little Spanish town in the early days of the Civil War…Mr. Hemingway: please publish the massacre scene separately, and then forget For Whom the Bell Tolls; please leave stories of the Spanish Civil War to Malraux…”
Commonweal
“This book offers not pleasure but mounting pain; as literature it lacks the reserve that steadies genius and that lack not only dims its brilliance but makes it dangerous in its influence.”
Catholic World
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, readings/research
“Sun-dried mud (usually clay) and straw bricks used for building construction. Used since pre-Roman times in Sumerian and Babylonian Architecture. adobe has been employed throughout the non-European world, including the U.S. Southwest, and in some European buildings.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“A brief, presumably interesting report of an experience or incident, especially a humorous account reflecting human foibles; confidential tale or piece of gossip, or an unknown biographical or historical particular; digressive episode. Adj. anecdotal; n anecdotist, anecdotalist.
‘He joked with Baitsell about the formalities, laughed at the red ribbons attached to the will, told a couple of anecdotes about old Newport and Harry Lehr’s will, and finally signed his name in a great, flourishing hand.’” Louis Auchincloss, Powers of Attorney
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, fiction/literature, term of art
[After viewing the film “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” in middle school, I became fascinated with Ambrose Bierce, and have been ever since. Regular readers of this blog will know that I often excerpt from The Devil’s Dictionary. The squib below is from a rejection of Bierce’s collection of short stories, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, which the Grolier Club named “one of the 100 most influential books printed before 1900….”]
“…uniformly horrible and revolting. Told with some power, and now and then with strokes of wonderfully vivid description, with plots ingenious in their terror and photographic in their sickening details, we must pronounce the book too brutal to be either good art or good literature. It is the triumph of realism–realism without power or symbolism.”
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, readings/research
“Knowledge is the antidote to fear.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
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