“Chaucer, not withstanding [sic] the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible: he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Piers Plowman or Thomas Erceldoune.”
Lord Byron, The Works of Lord Byron 1835
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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 literary oddities, poetry, readings/research
“His versification is so destitute of sustained harmony, many of his thoughts are so strained, his sentiments so unamiable, his misanthropy so gloomy, his libertinism so shameless, his merriment such a grinning of a ghastly smile, that I have always believed his verses would soon rank with forgotten things.”
John Quincy Adams, Memoirs 1830
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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 literary oddities, poetry, readings/research
There is definitely a theme of some kind emerging in the pattern of my last several posts here. I’m confident this Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Vanderbilt’s remarks–see above–about business and the public good will extend it.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“As the publishers say, it is a sympathetic and understanding study of a young man struggling with his soul. It might be even more sympathetic if Author Bellow (who is not in the Army) ever seemed to suspect that, as an object of pity, his hero is a pharisaical stinker.”
Time
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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
“He is a shallow, affected, self-conscious fribble–so there.”
Vita Sackville-West, letter to Harold Nicolson, 1959
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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
Over the summer vacation, I’ll be away from my computer for three Fridays. I’ve decided to post those missing Weekly Texts over the next couple of weeks.
Here, on the Fourth of July, is an Intellectual Devotional Reading on the Declaration of Indepedence and a comprehension worksheet to complement it.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“His characters are as shallow as the saucers in which they stack their daily emotions, and instead of interpreting his material–or even challenging it–he has been content merely to make a carbon copy of a not particularly significant surface life of Paris.”
The Dial
“…leaves one with the feeling that the people it describes really do not matter; one is left at the end with nothing to digest,”
The New York Times
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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
“The same road that has been traveled with Kerouac and to an extent Herbert Gold, this was for those schooled in the waste matter of the body and the mind; for others, a real recoil.”
Kirkus Reviews
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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
“Heller wallows in his own laughter and finally drowns in it. What remains is a debris of sour jokes, stage anger, dirty words, synthetic looniness, and the sort of antic behavior the children fall into when they know they are losing our attention.”
Whitney Balliet, The New Yorker
“There is a great difference, after all, between milking a joke (the great gift of all comedians) and stretching it out till you kill it. Mr. Heller has enough verve not to have to try so hard to be funny.”
William Barrett, Atlantic Monthly
“…it gasps for want of craft and sensibility…. The book is an emotional hodgepodge; no mood is sustained long enough to register for more than a chapter.”
New York Times Book Review
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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
“Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point…I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses…Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.”
Charlotte Bronte, letter to G.H. Lewes 1848
Excerpted from: Bernard, 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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