Tag Archives: humor

The Doubter’s Companion: University

“University: A place in which a civilization’s knowledge is divided up into exclusive territories.

The principal occupation of the academic community is to invent dialects sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories. By maintaining a constant flow of written material among the specialists of each group they are able to assert the acceptable technique of communication intended to prevent communications. This in turn establishes a standard which allows them to dismiss those who seek to communicate through generally accessible language as dilettantes, deformers, or popularizers.”

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

Rotten Reviews: Love and Death in the American Novel

“The author can’t win, ever, by Fiedler’s standard of judgement. Only the critic can win…there is more in American fiction, much more, than Fiedler has been able to find.”

Malcolm Cowley, New York Times Book Review

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

Write It Right: Collateral Descendant

“Collateral Descendant. There can be none: a ‘collateral descendant‘ is not a descendant.

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Novel

“Novel, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by it successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting.”

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

Write It Right: Had Better for Would Better

Had better for Would better. This is not a defensible as an idiom, as those who always used it before their attention was directed to it take the trouble to point out. It comes of such contractions as he’d for he would, I’d for I would. These clipped words are erroneously restored as ‘he had,’ ‘I had.’ So we have such monstrosities as ‘He had better beware,’ ‘I had better go.’”

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Merchant

“Merchant, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.”

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

The Algonquin Wits: George S. Kaufman on New York City Traffic

Kaufman once voiced a possible solution to the New York City’s traffic problem: ‘Have all the traffic lights on the streets turn red—and keep them that way.’”

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

Write It Right: Couple for Two

“Couple for Two. For two things to be a couple they must be of one general kind, and their number unimportant to the statement made by them. It would be weak to say, ‘He gave me only one, although he took a couple for himself.’ Couple expresses indifference to the exact number, as does several. That is true, even in the phrase, a married couple, for the number is carried in the adjective and needs no emphasis.”

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

George Bernard Shaw on Morality

“Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.”

George Bernard Shaw

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

Rotten Reviews: A Fan’s Notes

“Rotten Reviews: A Fan’s Notes

‘The book’s fault is its lack of passion.’

Library Journal”

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