Tag Archives: literary oddities

Rotten Reviews: James Joyce

“As one tortures one’s way through Finnegan’s Wake an impression grows that Joyce has lost his hold on human life. Obsessed by the spaceless and timeless void, he has outrun himself. We begin to feel that his very freedom to say anything has become a compulsion to say nothing.”

Alfred Kazin, New York Herald Tribune

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

Rotten Reviews: Charles Lamb

“Charles Lamb I sincerely believe to be in some considerable degree insane. A more pitiful, rickety, gasping, staggering, Tomfool I do not know.”

Thomas Carlyle, 1831, in The Book of Insults 1978

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

Rotten Reviews: Rudyard Kipling

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.”

San Francisco Examiner, rejection letter to Kipling, 1889″

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: President

“President n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom—and of whom only—it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.”

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

The Algonquin Wits: Harold Ross on Coherence

“Ross once stated emphatically to Robert Benchley: ‘Don’t think I’m not incoherent.'”

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

Rotten Reviews: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

“The book is long, drawn out, full of repetitions, and marred throughout by its obscenity and irreligion.”

Catholic World

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

Rotten Reviews: James Joyce

[This review refers to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.]

“…as a treatment of Irish politics, society or religion, it is negligible.”

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Conservative

“A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” 

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

The Algonquin Wits: George S. Kaufman on Raymond Massey’s Method Acting

“‘Massey won’t be satisfied until he’s assassinated.’ Kaufman remarked about actor Raymond Massey’s heralded performance in Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Opiate

“An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads to the jail yard.”

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