[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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“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.
“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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, women's history
“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.
“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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Clergyman, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson’s] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.”
Dorothy Parker, The New Yorker 25 Feb. 1928
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, women's history
[In book review] “This is not a book that should be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Quoted in The Algonquin Wits, ed. Robert E. Drennan (1968)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, women's history
“One of the ‘dark’ comedies (c. 1604) of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The plot is based on a traditional folk tale found in Boccaccio’s The Decameron. Helena, enamored of Bertram, count of Rousillon, is given to him in marriage by the king of France, whose life she has saved. However, Bertram spurns her (‘A poor physician’s daughter my wife?’) and leaves for the Italian wars. From there he writes to her:
‘When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father
to then call me husband, but in such a then, I write a never.’ III. iii
However, in disguise, Helena follows him to Italy, where she finds he is in love with a Florentine maid, whose place she takes in the dark, gets the ring, and conceives his child. In the end, she wins his love, after he has believed her dead.
The title All’s Well that Ends Well is from an old English proverb, known from the mid-13th century. It is somewhat ironic given the dark mood of the play, although it also has the suggestion of the ends justifying the means. At the end of the play the king, after all has been resolved, says:
‘All seems well; and if it end so meet,
The bitter past more welcome the sweet.” V. iii
He then adopts the role of epilogue, and, in accordance with theatrical convention, begs the audience’s indulgence for the play:
‘The king’s a beggar, now the play is done.
All is well ended if this suit be won,
That you express content; which we will pay
With strife to please you, day exceeding day.
Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;
Your gentle hands lead us, and take our hearts.’” V. iii, Epilogue
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
[As this blog probably indicates, or more accurately belabors, I find the folklore of books and publishing endlessly fascinating. I think the choices publishers make, based as often as not on their assessment of the market for a book, says a lot–and much of it not good–about a culture and a society. One of the most famous rejections in publishing history concerns William Kennedy’s magisterial novel Ironweed, which broke down the barrier to publication of the remainder of his distinguished oeuvre. The serial rejection of Ironweed so exercised Saul Bellow that the Nobel Laureate famously said to Cork Smith, an editor at Viking, that “the author of Billy Phelan should have a manuscript kicking around looking for a publisher is disgraceful.” In the end, Bellow intervened on Kennedy’s behalf at Viking. The rest, of course, is publishing history, as The Albany Cycle as the novels that accompany Ironweed are known, joined the ranks of great American literature.]
“There is much about the novel that is very good and much that I did not like. When I throw in the balance of the book’s unrelenting lack of commerciality, I am afraid I just have to pass.”
“I like William Kennedy but not enough. He’s a very good writer, something no one needs to tell you or him, and his characters are terrific. I cannot explain turning this down.”
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
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities, readings/research
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