Tag Archives: literary oddities

Kingsley Amis on Reasons to Write

Posted on October 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

“If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

Kingsley Amis

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

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The Algonquin Wits: Robert E. Sherwood on Presidential Elections and Succession

Posted on September 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Discussing modern presidential history, Sherwood once stated: ‘All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat ‘avoid foreign entanglements.’ All Hoover had to in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.’”

Robert E. Sherwood

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

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42—Life, The Universe, and Everything

Posted on September 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

“In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the computer Deep Thought takes 7.5 million years to work out the Answer to the Ultimate Questions of Life, the Universe and Everything is ‘42’—even if in the process the question had been forgotten. It is an answer that must disconcert Japanese readers, for 42 in Japan is like 49 in Chinese: when pronounced ‘four’ and ‘two,’ it sounds horribly similar to ‘unto death.’”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Benjamin Stolberg on Experts

Posted on September 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.”

Benjamin Stolberg

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

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Alben W. Barkley on “Bureaucrat” as an Epithet

Posted on September 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.”

Alben W. Barkley

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

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Rotten Rejections: Madame Bovary

Posted on September 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“You have buried your novel underneath a heap of details which are well done but utterly superfluous….”

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: Dictator

Posted on September 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Dictator, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.”

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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Ben Bagdikian on American Journalism

Posted on September 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele: the instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.”

Ben Bagdikian

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

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Write It Right: Article

Posted on September 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Article. A good and useful word, but used without meaning by shopkeepers; as, ‘A good article of vinegar,’ for a good vinegar.”

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

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Rotten Reviews Omnibus: Saul Bellow

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

The Adventures of Augie March

“All of Those Words, in denominations of from three to five letters, are present.”

Library Journal

Henderson the Rain King

“The novelist who doesn’t like meanings writes an allegory; the allegory means that men should not mean but be. Ods bodkins. The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”

Reed Whittemore, New Republic

“At times Henderson is too greyly overcast with thought to be more than a dun Quixote.”

Time

Herzog 

“There is no effort toward decency—many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.

America

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

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