Tag Archives: literary oddities

Rotten Reviews: King Lear

Posted on June 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

“This drama is chargeable with considerable imperfections,”

Joseph Warton, The Adventurer 1754

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: Senate

Posted on June 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.”

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: Winesburg, Ohio

Posted on June 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

[Imagine being the dimbulb publisher who said this about Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, by any standard a part of the American canon.]

“…far too gloomy for us.”

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

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All the President’s Men

Posted on June 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A film (1976) directed by Alan J. Pakula about the uncovering of the Watergate scandal, based on a book (1974) of the same title by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (played respectively by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman). The president of the title is Richard M. Nixon, and the title refers to the attempts of the president and others in the White House to cover up the scandal. The title plays on a line from the nursery rhyme:

‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Al the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’”

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

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Encomium

Posted on June 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Encomium, n. A kind of intellectual fog, through which the virtues of its object are seen magnified by many diameters.”

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 Reviews: The Cocktail Party, by T.S. Eliot

Posted on June 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

[Performed at the Edinburgh Festival, 1949]

“The week after–as well as the morning after–I take it to be nothing but a finely acted piece of flapdoodle.”

Alan Dent, News Chronicle

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: Inhumanity

Posted on May 1, 2018 | 1 comment

“Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.”

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: Jacqueline Susann and Valley of the Dolls

Posted on April 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

“She is painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene calls for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes that would not make the back pages of True Confessions, hauls out every terrible show biz cliché in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly…most of the first 200 pages are virtually worthless and dreadfully dull and practically every scene is dragged out and stomped on by her endless talk….”

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: Platitude

Posted on April 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Platitude, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope’s-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.”

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 Reviews: John Updike and Rabbit Run

Posted on April 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

“This grim little story is told with all the art we have learned to expect from Updike, but the nagging question remains: what does it come to? Rabbit, Janice and Ruth are all creatures of instinct, floundering in a world they cannot understand…The author fails to convince us that his puppets are interesting in themselves or that their plight has implications that transcend their narrow world.”

Milton Crane, Chicago Tribune

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

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