“Build for Make. ‘Build a fire.’ ‘Build a canal.’ Even ‘build a tunnel’ is not unknown, and probably if the woodchuck is skilled in the American tongue he speaks of building a hole.’”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A play (1962) by the US playwright Edward Albee (1928-2016) depicting the tense relationship between a sharp-tongued college professor and his embittered wife. Filmed in 1966 with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the two main roles, the play owed its memorable title to a line of graffiti scribbled in soap on a mirror in a bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village that the author happened visit in the 1950s. The quip, evidently derived from the song title ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’ from the Disney cartoon The Three Little Pigs (1933), was later redefined by Albee as meaning ‘who’s afraid of living without false illusions.’”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Rotten Reviews: What the Light Was Like
“…it would be better for Amy Clampitt if, at least for a while, she tucked her notes from Poetry 101 away in a trunk.”
Poetry
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 literary oddities, poetry, readings/research
“Who was Jeeves’s boss? Bertie Wooster, a young man-about-town in P.G. Wodehouse’s stories beginning with My Man Jeeves (1919). Jeeves was his valet.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“Aleck Woollcott once joined Corey Ford at the Ritz Men’s Bar and informed him, ‘Ford, I plan to spend three days at your house in New Hampshire next week.’ Not overly pleased at the prospect of hosting such a demanding guest, Ford uttered a meek ‘That will be swell.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Woollcott warned.’”
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
“Finance, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage or the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.”
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, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Business for Right. ‘He has no business to go there.’”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 4 (1899)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
“Upon the publication of Leaves of Grass, who wrote to Walt Whitman, ‘I greet you at the beginning of a great career.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1850. The complete salutation is: ‘I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start.’ Whitman was thirty-six at the time of the book’s publication.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Continually and Continuously. It seems that these words should have the same meaning, but in their use by good writers there is a difference. What is done continually is not done all the time. But continuous action is without interruption. A loquacious fellow, who nevertheless finds time to eat and sleep, is continually talking; but a great river flows continuously.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
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