Tag Archives: fiction/literature

Rotten Reviews: Thomas Mann and Buddenbrooks

Posted on August 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

[It’s worth mentioning here, I think, that Thomas Mann was the Nobel Laureate in Literature for 1929. These Rotten Reviews refer, as above, to Buddenbrooks, published in 1901]

“Very few Americans will take the trouble to read this book ot the end. It contains no climaxes, no vivid surprise…. Interesting as the story may be it is too loosely constructed, and for many readers that will prove a barrier.”

Boston Evening Transcript, 1921

“Nothing but two thick tomes in which the author describes the worthless story of worthless people in worthless chatter.”

Edward Engel, in The Art of Folly 1961

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

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The Bloomsbury Group

Posted on August 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A group of English writers and artists who gathered regularly in the Bloomsbury section of London before, during, and after World War I. Their unconventional lifestyle, socialist views, and aesthetic sensibility combined to give ‘Bloomsbury‘ a connotation outside the circle of somewhat precious snobbery. Central to the group were artists Vanessa and Clive Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant; writers Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster; and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge-educated and the artistic and intellectual pacesetters of their generation, they were devoted adherents of the philosopher G.E. Moore and were frequently joined at their ‘Thursday evenings’ by such Cambridge luminaries as Bertrand Russell and Rupert Brooke.”

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

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Term of Art: Anticlimax

Posted on August 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A critical term, the first recorded definition of which comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson: ‘a sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first.’ It is often used deliberately for comic effect to create an ironical letdown by descending from a noble tone or image to a trivial or ludicrous one. For example, in Henry Fielding’s burlesque The Tragedy of Tragedies (1931), Lord Grizzle addresses Huncamunca: ‘Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, Oh!/ Thy pouting breasts, like Kettle-Drums of Brass,/Beat everlasting loud Alarms of joy….’ Bathos is an unintentional anticlimax.”

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

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A Nineteenth-Century, British, View of Education from Thomas Hughes

Posted on August 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.”

Thomas Hughes

Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Pt. I, Ch. 2 (1857)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Posted on August 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A fantasy novel (1964) by Roald Dahl (1916-90), in which Charlie Buckett wins a ticket that allows him to visit a chocolate factory owned by Mr Willy Wonka and manned by tiny men called Oompa-Loompas. It was filmed as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Dahl’s sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was published in 1971.”

[A second filmed version of this book, starring Johnny Depp, appeared in 2005 as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.]

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

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The Septuagint

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The Septuagint is the name for the Greek translation of the Hebrew Testament made in Alexandria in Egypt in the fourth century BC. Believed to be either a miraculous harmony of scholars working separately to produce an identical textual translation, or a body of seventy scholars working together to produce a single agreed text—which is arguably an even more miraculous occurrence.”

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.

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Beowulf

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

As we count down the days to the beginning of the school year, it may be a good time, particularly if you’re teaching English in the upper grades, to post this short reading on Beowulf and this reading comprehension worksheet that attends it.

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.

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John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces

Posted on August 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A satirical novel (1980) by the US novelist John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969). Thanks to the efforts of his mother it was published more than ten years after he committed suicide, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is set in New Orleans, and the central character, Ignatius Reilly, is an overweight, argumentative layabout who interrelates with a cast of equally eccentric and accident-prone characters. The title comes from Jonathan Swift:

‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.

Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting (1711)'”

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

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Postcolonialism

Posted on August 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

So today seems like an appropriate time to post this reading on postcolonialism along with the comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This reading deals with postcolonial literary movements and personalities, so if you’re reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, or other postcolonial literature, this might be a useful adjunct.

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.

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The Algonquin Wits: Edna Ferber on Nobel Laureates and Critics

Posted on August 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Speaking about reviewers who seemed unable to render honest, objective critiques on the works of such writers as had won the Nobel Prize, Miss Ferber described them as ‘awestruck by the Nobelity.'”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

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