Tag Archives: fiction/literature

Cyril Connolly on Civilization

Posted on June 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

“The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”

Cyril Connolly

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Alliance

Posted on June 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Coda

Posted on June 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Coda (noun): A concluding part of a literary work, often as a set piece that rounds out or brings another; culminating passage; peroration.

‘The message was the same each time—learn to love thyself—and was usually tacked on as abruptly as those codas that once concluded episodes of Father Knows Best. Frank Rich, The New York Times.'”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Rabindranath Tagore

Posted on May 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Rabindranath Tagore: Bengali poet, writer, composer, and painter. The son of Debendranath Tagore, he published several books of poetry, including Manasi, in his twenties. His later religious poetry was introduced to the West in Gitanjali (1912). Through international travel and lecturing, he introduced aspects of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. He spoke ardently in favor of Indian independence; as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, he repudiated the knighthood he had received in 1915. He founded an experimental school in Bengal where he sought to blend Eastern and Western philosophies; it became Vishva-Bharati University (1921). He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Fables of Bidpai

Posted on May 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Fables of Bidpai: An Arabic version of a collection of Indian fables common to Buddhism and Brahminism, also known as Kalilah and Dimnah. They were collected in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and translated into Persian about AD 55. Bidpai means court scholar, and the allegorical animal stories are told as a wise man’s advice to a young Indian price.”

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

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Maxine Hong Kingston

Posted on May 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Maxine Hong Kingston originally Maxine Hong: (b.1940) U.S. writer. Born to an immigrant family in Stockton, California, she has taught at various schools and universities. Her novels and nonfiction works explore the myths, realities, and cultural identities of Chinese and American families and the role of women in Chinese culture. Her widely admired The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980) blend fact and fantasy to tell aspects of her family’s history; Tripmaster Monkey (1988) concerns a young Chinese-American man.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Cliche

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Cliché (noun): An expression so overused as to be trite, such as a hackneyed idiom or dead metaphor; stereotyped, overworked idea; evident commonplace. Adjective: cliché, clichéd.

‘The language is a double-depressant of numbing, cliché-ridden prose that ranges from Lady Bountiful pitter-patter to tearoom philosophizing.’ Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Rotten Reviews: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

“The publisher promises that anyone who has a deep love for the well-made English sentence will find these stories richly rewarding. Perhaps so. But there is every chance that the rest of us—those who prefer to curl up with a good book—will be left gasping with boredom instead.”

Book World

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

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George Orwell on Credulity

Posted on April 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

“There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”

George Orwell

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Cultural Literacy: Gertrude Stein

Posted on March 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Gertrude Stein. This is a full-page document with a reading of three sentences and five comprehension question. It’s a curiously asymmetrical page, far from perfect. But is anyone teaching Gertrude Stein’s work? She is presented here as a historical figure and the coiner of the term “Lost Generation,” which perhaps is all high school students need to know about her.

But what do you think?

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.

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