Tag Archives: humor

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.

The Doubter’s Companion: Bretton Woods

“Bretton Woods: A system for international financial management and stability which was put in place by the Allies, minus the Soviets, in 1944 and destroyed in 1973 by President Richard Nixon without consideration being given to a replacement.

Nixon hoped in this way to solve some short-term American economic problems by recreating the sort of financial disorder in which the largest power would be the best placed to benefit. It could be said that this was the single most evil act undertaken by a leader in the postwar period. Other leaders should be discouraged, however. The opportunity to do worse is perpetual.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley

“On the death of a Hollywood movie queen whose sensational love-life had been highly publicized, Benchley suggested an epitaph” ‘She sleeps alone at last.’”

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

August Strindberg on Society

“Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and police.”

August Strindberg

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

Evelyn Waugh on Youth

“What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?”

Evelyn Waugh

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

Anatole France on Dying for Abstractions

“To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.”

Anatole France

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

James Russell Lowell with a Somehow Timely Assessment of Democracy

“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”

James Russell Lowell

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

Write It Right: Directly for Immediately

“Directly for Immediately. ‘I will come directly’ means that I will come by the most direct route.”

Ambrose Bierce

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Auctioneer

“Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.”

Ambrose Bierce

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