Tag Archives: literary oddities

Rotten Reviews: A Henry James Omnibus

Posted on July 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It is becoming painfully evident that Mr. James has written himself out as far as the international novel is concerned, and probably as far as any kind of novel-writing is concerned.”

William Morton Payne, The Dial, 1884

“James’ denatured people are only the equivalent in fiction of those egg-faced, black-haired ladies who sit and sit in the Japanese colour-prints…. These people cleared for artistic treatment never make lusty love, never go to angry war, never shout at an election or perspire at poker.”

H.G. Wells, Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Ants of the Devil, and the Last Trump 1915

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

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Rotten Reviews: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

Posted on July 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It [Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House] was as though someone dramatized the cooking of a Sunday dinner.”

Clement Scott, Sporting and Dramatic News, 1889

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

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Edmund White: A Boy’s Own Story

Posted on July 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The first novel (1982) in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by the US novelist Edmund White (b. 1940). It charts a boy’s growing awareness of his homosexuality. The others are The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988) and Farewell Symphony (1997).

The title is an ironic echo of The Boy’s Own Paper (often referred to as ‘the BOP), a boy’s magazine published from 1879 to 1967, initially by the Religious Tract Society. The last issue of the BOP featured on its cover the 21-year-old Manchester United footballer George Best, described as a role model who ‘doesn’t smoke, drinks only occasionally, and restricts his card playing to sessions which ease the boredom of travelling.'”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Reviews: Max Eastman on Ernest Hemingway

Posted on July 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It is of course a commonplace that Hemingway lacks the serene confidence that he is a full-sized man.”

Max Eastman

New Republic, 1933

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

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Posted on July 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A dystopian novel (1932) by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). Its portrayal of an imagined future state in which men and women are processed into standardized batches by genetic engineering and lifelong conditioning was originally conceived as a challenge to the claims of H.G. Wells (1866-1946) for the desirability of eugenics. The title derives from Miranda’s exclamation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611):

‘O brave new world,

That has such people in’t!’

V.i”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Rotten Reviews: An Aldous Huxley/Brave New World Omnibus

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”

New York Herald Tribune

“… a somewhat amusing book; a bright man can do a good deal with two or three simple ideas.”

Granville Hicks, New Republic

“There are no surprises in it; and if he had no surprises to give us why would Mr. Huxley have bothered to turn this essay in indignation into a novel?”

New Statesman and Nation

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

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The Brooklyn Bridge as Metaphor and Object

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A long poem (1930) by the US poet Hart Crane (1899-1932). The work is a Whitmanesque celebration of America, its culture and history, and the image of Brooklyn Bridge acts as a link between past and present, a symbol of imagination and striving:

‘O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.’
Hart Crane, The Bridge, proem ‘To Brooklyn Bridge’

Brooklyn Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River and so linking Brooklyn and Manhattan Island. It was built in 1869-83, and incorporates a number of impressive technical innovations. With its tough, angular, futuristic structure, it became something of an icon for American modernists, being the subject of semi-abstract paintings by, for example, John Marin (1910-1932) and Joseph Stella (1917-1918). More recently, David and Victoria (‘Posh Spice’) Beckham chose to call their son Brooklyn because he was conceived while they crossed the bridge.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Pantheism

Posted on July 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Pantheism: The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.”

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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Rotten Rejections: In My Father’s Court

Posted on July 12, 2018 | Leave a comment

[This refers to the 1966 novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer.]

“Too pedestrian.”

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

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The Algonquin Wits: George S. Kaufman to Herbert Bayard Swope at Dinnertime

Posted on July 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Herbert Bayard Swope, who had a penchant for dining at odd hours, called G.S.K. one evening at 9:30 one evening and asked, ‘What are you doing for dinner this evening?’

‘I’m digesting it,’ Kaufman replied.”

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

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