“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar Country “February: The One We Could Do Without” (1949)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, readings/research
“…absolute raving…his principles are ludicrously wicked, and his poetry a mélange of nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry.”
Literary Gazette
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, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, poetry
Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dorothy Parker, the great Algonquin Wit and (in my opinion) an under-recognized figure in American letters. If you or your students have an interest in Dorothy Parker, this blog contains numerous entries on her: just search her name on the homepage search bar.
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.
“Attending an unsuccessful revival of the Maeterlinck play Aglavaine and Selysette, Tallullah Bankhead commented to Aleck Woollcott, ‘There is less to this than meets the eye.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“Aberration, n. Any deviation in another from one’s own habit of thought, not sufficient in itself to constitute insanity. “
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
OK, pushing forward to blog post 3,000, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “A Matter of Delicacy.”
I open this lesson, to get young minds focused and working, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Langston Hughes. This scan of the illustration and questions of and for the case drives the lesson. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.
Incidentally, I am just about to post a trove of supporting materials for the Crime and Puzzlement units over on the About Posts and Texts page, the link to which is just below the banner of this website.
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.
“Lardner was amused by Henry Ford’s famous comment on John D. Rockefeller, ‘I saw John D. Rockefeller but once, But when I saw that face, I knew what made Standard Oil.’ Lardner himself once observed, ‘[I] also have seen John D. only once and that was on the golf course at Ormond, too far back from him to get a look at his face, but the instant I beheld that stance I knew what made divots.'”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to famous too young.”
Quoted in N.Y. Times Magazine, 12 September 1965
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, humor, music, united states history
“Cupid, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow—of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestions of the work—this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of posterity.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“Jazz was like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.”
Quoted in NY Times Magazine, 12 September 1965
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, humor, music, united states history
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