Tag Archives: literary oddities

Denis Diderot on Moral Precepts

Posted on December 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.”

Denis Diderot

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

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The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley Vacations in Venice

Posted on December 3, 2020 | Leave a comment

“On a summer vacation trip Benchley arrived in Venice and immediately wired a friend: ‘STREETS FLOODED. PLEASE ADVISE.’”

Robert Benchley

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

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Rotten Reviews: The Man Who Knew Kennedy by Vance Bourjaily

Posted on November 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The man who knew Kennedy didn’t know him very well. I’m almost as intimate with Lyndon Johnson. I met him once.”

Webster Schott, 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.    

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Abridgement

Posted on November 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Abridgement, n. A brief summary of some person’s literary work, in which those parts that tell against the convictions of the abridger are omitted for want of space.” 

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

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Lenny Bruce on Communism

Posted on November 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Communism is like one big phone company.”

Lenny Bruce

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

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Book of Answers: Holden Caulfield’s Roommate

Posted on November 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“What was the name of Holden Caulfield’s roommate in The Catcher in the Rye (1951)? Stradlater was the rich and conceited roommate.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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The Algonquin Wits: Alexander Woollcott Defends Harpo Marx

Posted on November 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Struggling to pacify the ‘head of protocol’ at a Paris casino, after his companion Harpo Marx had distressed the gentleman with a few good-natured antics, Aleck turned to Harpo and asked, ‘How can I explain you?… There’s no French word for boob.’”

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

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Jonathan Swift, Famously, on a Confederacy of Dunces

Posted on November 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

“When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.”

Jonathan Swift

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

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A Rotten Reviews Omnibus: Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Posted on November 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

“It’s hard to believe that a lady from Kansas City with a house in the best residential section, one full-time maid, one mink coat and a Lincoln for her very own, should finish up as timorous and ephemeral as a lunar moth on the outside of a window.”

Florence Crowther, New York Times Book Review

“It is hard to imagine a creep like Bridge ever lived. If he did, so what? Connell fails to show that he has any relevance to what’s happening in America, 1969.”

Cleveland Press

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

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Write It Right: Bar for Bend

Posted on November 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

Bar for Bend. ‘Bar sinister.’ There is no such thing in heraldry as a bar sinister.

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

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