“We fancy that any real child might be more puzzled that enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story.”
Children’s Books
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
I’ve always enjoyed this squib from David Grambs’ The Random House Dictionary for Readers and Writers (New York: Random House, 1990) which appears, alas, to be out of print.
“Timestyle, Time-ese n. The characteristically heady and melodramatically compressed prose style of Time magazine, with particular reference to its zesty verbs, marshaled characterizing adjectives and hyphenated compound words, clever coinages and puns, and above all (formerly) the frequent use of verbs at the beginnings of sentences and hence inverted syntax.
Brain child of joke-making, china-dog-collecting, cordovan-shoe-wearing Briton Hadden more than Time co-founding, beetle-browed, baggy-britched Henry Luce was Timestyle. Wrote Wolcottt Gibbs in a New Yorker profile of Luce: ‘Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind. Where it will end, knows God!’ Ended has inversion since Godwent Luce.'” –John B. Bremner, Words on Words
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
The great American literary critic Edmund Wilson, of whom I have long been an great admirer, was famous for his refusal card, which I’ve reprinted here. At some point, I’ll rewrite this for public school teachers. Is there anything or anyone in particular to which or whom you would like to say no?
“Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him without compensation to:
read manuscripts
contribute to books or periodicals
do editorial work
judge literary contests
deliver lectures
address meetings
make after-dinner speeches
broadcast;
Under any circumstances to:
contribute to or take part in symposiums
take part in chain-poems or other collective compositions
contribute manuscripts for sales
donate copies of his books to libraries
autograph books for strangers
supply personal information about himself
supply photographs of himself
allow his name to be used on letter-heads
receive unknown persons who have no apparent business with him.”
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