Tag Archives: humor

Rotten Reviews: Paul Goodman

Posted on August 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

“The worst written book I have read in quite a long time.”

W. Brogan, The Guardian

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

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John Updike on Critics

Posted on August 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.”

John Updike

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

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Voltaire on Publishing

Posted on August 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

“The multitude of books is making us ignorant.”

Voltaire

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

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Oscar Wilde on Fashion

Posted on July 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

Oscar Wilde

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

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William Feather Indicts Civilization

Posted on July 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

“One of the indictments of civilization is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.”

William Feather

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

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Gene Fowler on Editors

Posted on July 19, 2024 | Leave a comment

“An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he’d have someone to look up to.”

Gene Fowler

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

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Malcolm Bradbury on Fashion

Posted on July 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Never despise fashion. It’s what we have instead of God.”

Malcolm Bradbury

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

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The Doubter’s Companion: Bad News

Posted on July 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Bad News: Those who have power always complain that journalists are only interested in bad news. ‘But if the newspapers in a country are full of good news, the jails are full of good people.’

Elsewhere, bad news comes as light relief from the unrelenting rightness of those with expertise and power. They insist that they are applying the correct and therefore inevitable solution to each problem. And when it fails they avoid self-doubt or a public examination of what went wrong by moving on to the next right answer. Bad news is the citizen’s only substitute for public debate.”

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

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Rotten Reviews: Gail Godwin, A Mother and Two Daughters

Posted on July 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Godwin earnestly sticks by her characters… The only trouble is, like the people next door, they’re nice but not very interesting.”

Saturday Review 

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

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Colson Whitehead on Relief of Psychic Distress

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“…When her mother passed, Elizabeth got a copy of that book On Death and Dying, which identified the Five Stages of Grief. When Pepper was laid low, the Four Stages of Putting Your Foot Up Somebody’s Ass provided similar comfort.”

Whitehead, Colson. Crook Manifesto. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

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