“A generous, sensitive, intelligent and literate book that despite its generosity, sensitivity, humanity, and literacy, manages to be a deadly bore.”
The New Yorker
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
In this age of super-duper video games, I doubt there would be much call for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Three Musketeers. In middle school, I loved the swashbucklers, but it doesn’t appear they are much read anymore. I suppose, if nothing else, this half-page document with its three-sentence reading and three comprehension question might play a role in some sort of instruction in literary history, especially where Dumas is concerned.
And it seems to me that most people in the world would benefit from dedicating some thought to the Three Musketeers’ motto: “All for one and one for all.”
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.
“An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in Quotes, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Whom did novelist Henry Fielding summon to court for the murder of the English language? Poet laureate Colley Cibber in 1740. Fielding issued the summons under the pseudonym ‘Captain Hercules Vinegar.’”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, poetry
“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Zeus (Jupiter) * Hera (Juno) * Poseidon (Neptune) * Aphrodite (Venus) * Athena (Minerva) * Apollo (Apollo) * Artemis (Diana) * Hermes (Mercury) * Dionysus (Bacchus) * Hades (Pluto) * Aries (Mars) *Hephaestus (Vulcan) * Hestia (Vesta)
The cult of six female goddesses paired with six male gods came to Greece from western Anatolia during the Iron Age, though the doubling up of a trinity of female goddesses, and then giving the appropriate male counterparts, was a familiar aspect of many ancient cultures. Hercules is first credited with organizing sacrifices to all twelve of the great gods who dwelt on Mount Olympus and the oldest such altar was associated with Athens. The precise names of the Olympian pantheon would shift during 1,000 years of worship, which is why thirteen deities have been listed. Hades, as Lord of the Underworld, was vulnerable to downgrading, especially in favor of Hestia/Vesta, while at other times Hephaestus could be exchanged for Hercules, and in the early period Dionysus held an equivocal position.
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
“Colloquialism (noun): Spoken of conversational expression; familiar or informal English that falls between standard English and slang; everyday speech; an informal word or expression, or (loosely) a local or dialectical usage.
‘I had to learn American just like a foreign language. To learn it, I had to study and analyze it. As a result, when I use slang, colloquialisms, snide talk or any kind of off-beat language I do it deliberately.’ Raymond Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Reinaldo Arenas: (1943-1990) Cuban novelist. A great innovator with an inexhaustible poetic imagination, Arenas suffered years of repression of his ‘lack of realism’ and supposed decadence, as well as for his political dissent and open homosexuality. He exiled himself to New York in 1980. The novel that launched Arenas was El mundo alucinante (1969; tr Hallucinations, 1971), an allegorical reconstruction of the adventures of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican priest of the late 18th century, whose subversive mystical thought paved the way for Mexican independence. Arenas’s central work was ‘pentagony’ of five novels dealing with life in Cuba before and after Castro, consisting of Celestino antes del alba (1967; tr Singing from the Well, 1988); El palacio de las blanquistas mofetas (The Palace of the Very White Skunks, 1980); Otra vez del mar (1982; tr Farewell to the Sea, 1986); El color del verano (The Color of Summer, 1991); and El asalto (1991; tr The Assault, 1993). Other books include La vieja rosa (1980; tr Old Rosa, 1989), depicting a woman’s aging process within a society whose traditional values have been profoundly altered, and Arturo, la Estrella ms brillante (1984; tr Arturo, the Shining Star, 1992), about the traumatic experiences of a homosexual in a concentration camp. Ill with AIDS and no longer able to write, Arenas committed suicide in 1990 after completing his last works. He left two extreme visions of himself, the tender recollections of Adis a Mam (Good-bye to Mama, 1994) and his controversial autobiography, Antes que anochezca (1992; tr Before Night Falls, 1993), which portrays his troubled youth and sexual excesses.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
OK, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Don Quixote for the final documents post of this blog’s observation of Hispanic Heritage Month 2023. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and six comprehension questions. Perhaps it’s length does not befit this landmark in world literature (confession: I am always reading this book–I keep it by my bedside and read a few pages each week; when I finish, I open the front cover and start again. It really is that good), but it is a solid introduction to this truly great book.
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.
“Salvador Elizondo: (1932-2006) Mexican writer. Linked to the post-Boom writers like Sarduy and Rodriguez Julia, Elizondo is a writer’s writer, with a strong affinity to Borges. In junior high school he lived in in California, which would form the setting for his novella Elsinore (1988). His first collection of stories, Narda o el Verano (1964), contained ‘Historia de Pao Cheng,’ in which the title character leans over a writer’s shoulder to find out that he is a character in the story, and that, should the story end, he will die. The tale synthesizes many of Elizondo’s concerns about the nature of the creative process, the role of the writer and reader, and forms the basis of his novel El hipogeo secreto (1968). Farabeuf (1965; tr Farabeuf, The Chronicle of an Instant, 1992), his first novel, won the Villaurrutia Prize and established him internationally. It chronicles the obsession of a couple with a Chinese form of torture known as ‘Leng t’che,’ but through the use of images and ideograms becomes a hallucinatory, exquisitely written meditation on the insufficiencies and dangers of words. Elizondo has published a play, Miscast (1981), and books of critical prose, including Estanquillo (1993). His Cuaderno de Escritura (1969), ‘a writer’s notebook,’ contains a phrase that admirably sums up his aesthetic: ‘Scribo ergo sum.’”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
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