Tag Archives: fiction/literature

The Weekly Text, 23 October 2026: A Pair of Learning Supports on Annotating Text

In my final couple years of co-teaching high school English Language Arts class, I was disappointed that students rarely read entire books (although I had the good fortune to work with two English teachers who did assign entire books), and therefore seldom performed any substantial interpretive work on what they did read–which was and is, I expect, short passages from novels. Students annotate these texts, but don’t really write anything insightful about them. Still, given how little students read these days, they struggled with adding interpretive notes–i.e. annotating–even these short texts.

So I developed this learning support on annotating for analogy, allusion, metaphor and tone, and this one on rhetorical analysis for ethos, pathos, and logos.

If you find typos in these documents, 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.

Rotten Reviews: Cat Man

[This rotten review refers to the novel Cat Man by Edward Hoagland]

“This lengthy description of the lower depths of existence among men who pick up a living around travelling circuses is frequently disgusting in an eager, repetitious, small-boy way.

The New Yorker 

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

Cultural Literacy: T.S. Eliot

Although I expect he is not much taught at the secondary level (where, nonetheless, I first encountered him), here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on T.S. Eliot. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and four comprehension questions. A short, symmetrical, and almost thorough introduction to this important, if controversial, twentieth-century poet.

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.

The Weekly Text, 16 October 2026: An Article on the Bookstores of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hispanic Heritage Month 2026 ended yesterday, but I want to post, from the Summer 2026 issue of Fine Books & Collections magazine, this article on the bookstores of Buenos Aires. It speaks for itself, so there is no need for me to carry on here–other than to mention, I suppose, if it is not obvious, that I am a bibliophile.

Aestheticism

“Aestheticism: Generally, a term applied to a way of perceiving things that was common among the writers and artists of the 19th century who adhered to the doctrine of art for art’s sake. The movement, or cult, was largely influenced by German romantics, particularly Goethe. Because of the quest for beauty and the insistence that art should serve no moral or didactic purpose, it was related with the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Parnassians. Major exponents of aestheticism in America were Edgar Allan Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Book of Answers: Miss Havisham’s House

What is the name of Miss Havisham’s house in Dickens’s Great Expectations? Satis House

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Word Origins: Bathos

“bathos: [M17th] This is a Greek word and was first recorded in English in the literal Greek sense ‘depth.’ The literary sense was introduced by Alexander Pope in the early 18th century. He published the Bathos in Miscellanies (third volume) in 1728, which was a lively satire giving descriptions of bad authors. Bathysphere [1930] for a spherical chamber that can be lowered into the depths of the sea, comes from the same source.”

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Rotten Reviews Omnibus: Lillian Hellman

Toys in the Attic

“It is curious how incest, impotence, nymphomania, religious mania and real estate speculation can be so dull.”

Richard Findlater, Time and Tide

 “Lillian Hellman has chosen to write on a Tennessee Williams theme in an Agatha Christie style.”

Times (London) 

Scoundrel Time

“Scoundrel Time is historically a fraud, artistically a put-up job, and emotionally packed with meanness.”

Dwight MacDonald, Esquire

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

Mark Twain on Soap and Education

“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more deadly in the long run.”

Mark Twain

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Battle of Agincourt

“Battle of Agincourt: (1415) A battle in northern France. The English army defeated the more numerous, better armed French. It is the setting for Shakespeare’s Henry V and Michael Drayton’s ‘The Battle of Agincourt‘ (c1605).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.