“Book-learning, n. The dunce’s derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impenitent ignorance.”
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
“Public opinion in this country runs like a shower bath. We have no temperatures between hot and cold.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities
“D.H. Lawrence has a diseased mind. He is obsessed by sex…we have no doubt that he will be ostracized by all except the most degenerate coteries in the literary world.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“[Telegram sent to Frederic Remington. whom Hearst had sent to Cuba to cover a rebellion there;] You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
William Randolph Hearst, U.S. Publisher, 1863-1951
Attributed in James Creelman, On the Great Highway (1901). Howard Langer, America in Quotations, notes: “Some scholars now question Creelman’s reliability, pointing out that neither Remington nor Davis [a correspondent accompanying Remington to Cuba] ever confirmed it and that Hearst flatly denied it.”
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Mr. Lowry is passionately in earnest about what he has to say concerning human hope and defeat, but for all his earnestness he has succeeded only in writing a rather good imitation of an important novel.”
The New Yorker
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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 fiction/literature, literary oddities
“A dark novel (1939) by the US writer Nathanael West (1903-1940). The work explores the seamy underside of Hollywood (where West himself had worked as a scriptwriter), and shows how it eats away at people’s better selves. At the end Homer, a harmless but unexciting accountant, knocks down a boy who attacks him, and is in turn overwhelmed by a group of people (like a swarm of locusts) who are waiting for the arrival of stars at a a premiere.
‘I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.’
Joel 2:25
John Schlesinger’s 1975 film of West’s book, with Donald Sutherland and Karen Black, was highly regarded.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Pure melodrama. There is not a touch of characterization that goes below the skin.”
George Bernard Shaw, Saturday Review 1897
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
“On what corner was the Old Corner Bookstore? It was located on the corner of Washington and School streets in Boston. Founded in 1828. The store became a well-known gathering place for writers like Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Whittier. Its owners were publishers William D. Ticknor and James T. Fields.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine. Frequently appended to each installment is a ‘synopsis of preceding chapters’ for those who have not read them, but a direr need is a synopsis of succeeding chapters for those who do not intend to read them. A synopsis of the entire work would be still better.
The late James F. Bowman was writing a serial tale for a weekly paper in collaboration with a genius whose name has not come down to us. They wrote, not jointly but alternately, Bowman supplying the instalment for one week, his friend for the next, and so on, world without end, they hoped. Unfortunately they quarreled, and one Monday morning when Bowman read the paper to prepare himself for his task, he found the work cut out for him in a way to surprise and pain him. His collaborator had embarked every character of the narrative on a ship and sunk them all in the deepest part of the Atlantic.”
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, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
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