★☆☆☆☆

It’s always sobering to read Amazon’s one-star reviews of literary works. One-starrers can serve to remind teachers of lit of what they may be up against.

A review of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood :

This was pointless and It stunk. For those who enjoyed this I would seriously like to know what you are on.

Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House :

Drama wasn’t so high a drama as it is now days. At times the writing was good, but the story was just dull, dull, dull. Originally the writer wrote a long short story. Then for some reason, perhaps because the publisher said it wasn’t long enough to be a book, she added a beginning and an ending. The middle part is the good part. The added beginning and end cause the work as a whole to suck like a vacuum cleaner.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man :

Invisible man by ralph ellison gave me the worst agony of any book i’ve ever had to read in school. it has absolutely NO plot and it is totally biased. i hated it- and if your under the age of 65 you will too.

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying :

This is definatly one of the worst books I have ever read. Faulkner must have just accidently wrote a book or something. The storyline is that the mother of a family dies and they take her to a city to be buried, except it is much boring boring than that and much more disgusting and Faulkner drags it out over about 50 chapters. This book is boring, disgusting, and barely even makes sense. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but Satan himself.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God :

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH NOT LETTING US RATE IT AS A ZERO. WISH I COULD HAVE. this book was a burden on my soul, then entire time i was forced to read it. it drivels on in such a manner as to make the novel a complete horror to read. i don’t care if it’s a classic about a woman’s fight to survive or find her soul. A BOOK IS ONLY GOOD BASED ON HOW MUCH YOU ENJOY READING IT, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED IT. i just wanted it to be over, so i could take the test and pass it, because it was such a blandly written piece of trash that a four year old could understand it and hate it as well. i’m sure there are people out there that love this novel, not everyone shares the same view. hey, that’s why Titanic was such a popular movie. my whole point is to not think it’s good just because a critic says so, myself and about 30 of my classmates would rather be punched in the gut than forced to think about this for another second. why write a review if i hate it so much you ask? i’ll tell you why...it’s really late and i’m bored. i’m writing a letter to my teacher and i needed to know how to spell the author’s name, so i came here. so to anyone out there that doesn’t just think things are good because someone says they are...don’t touch this silly novel for the life of you. i’m done now, you can all tell me taht this didn't help you now, to get it off the list of reviews, and how pathetic is that? are you that insecure about the quality of your novel? you should be. in conclusion, i hated this novel even more than i hated that stupid book Kindred.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis :

This book really wasnt that good. It opens with the guy turning into a bug... at the end, well, I wont spoil it for you all who are going to read it. But my point is, nothing really happened. I dont see the point of him turning into this vile creature... I thought it was supposed to be some big anaology of the world today, but if it is, I still dont get it. Maybe its just beyond me. There are a lot of better books out there. If I could give it 0 stars, I would.

J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey :

wHERE SHOULd I start well how about this book sucked. Boys and Girls don’t waste your time. Never once in my reading was I even closed to becoming entertanined. I hated it because it was boring had no point and most importantly wasted my time, and if you read it it will waste your time. J.D.Ss the Catcher in the Raye was a great book read that one. If you have to read this book in school boy it sucks to be you. The only reason I gave this book one star was because that was the lowest grade I could of given it. I would of given this book 1/4 of star because I like the title of the book. Remember don’t waste your time do something else ok

Anyone can play.

[Reproduced as found, with curly (smart) apostrophes replacing straight ones.]

Tertan and Blackburn and Howe

Two excerpts:


Lionel Trilling, “Of This Time, Of That Place” (1943).

A colleague pointed me to “Of This Time, Of That Place” some years ago. Reading John Williams’s novel Stoner (1965) and thinking about its depiction of the student Charles Walker prompted me to read Trilling’s story again. Its protagonist Joseph Howe is a poet and instructor at a private college in a town of picket fences and dinner parties — the academic pastoral. Into Howe’s life enter two cases of what now would be called “the difficult student”: “Tertan, Ferdinand R.” and “Blackburn, sir, Theodore Blackburn, vice-president of the Student Council.” That’s how they introduce themselves.

I suspect that Trilling’s depiction of these students, one of whom — but which one? — is madder than the other, will be of interest to anyone who teaches young adults. Who is really the more troubling case: Tertan, whose writing in the first passage above is an extemporaneous response to the in-class prompt “Who I am and why I came to Dwight College”? Or Blackburn, who pleads “I've never had a mark like this before, never anything below a B, never”?

You can read “Of This Time, Of That Place” at archive.org. I found the story in the Trilling-edited anthology The Experience of Literature  (1967).

[An aside: I suspect that Williams had Trilling’s story in mind: like Blackburn, Walker gets into in a class by special arrangement, as a result of a teacher’s generosity. Please, please, please.]

Word of the day: ambisinistrous

Joe Gould speaks of his childhood:

“Usually, when I was supposed to be paying attention to something, I was busy blowing my nose. Also, I was just generally inept. Not long ago, looking up something in the unabridged dictionary, I came across a word that sums up the way I was then, and for that matter, the way I am now — ‘ambisinistrous,’ or left-handed in both hands.”

Joseph Mitchell, “Joe Gould’s Secret” (1964).

It’s for real. Webster’s Second (perhaps the unabridged dictionary Gould used?) has it, coupled with the adjective ambisinister : “Left-handed, or clumsy, in the use of both hands.” Both ambisinister and ambisinistrous are missing from the Third .

Words, words, words

[Build Your Vocabulary (Coronet Instructional Films, 1948).]

Remember: “A good working vocabulary helps you to be more explicit.” I especially like the son-father vocabulary notebooks. I could watch this stuff all day, but then I wouldn’t have time to be working on my own personal vocabulary notebook.

My favorite moment: the newspaper headline. What’s yours?

John James deBoer, identified in the opening credits as a collaborator on this film, was an important figure in the history of academic freedom at the University of Illinois.

“Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?”

Provocative reading in The Chronicle of Higher Education : Joseph R. Teller, “Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?” A sample:

I have tried requiring students to write only three essays developed over several drafts, each of which I comment on without a grade. I have used peer workshops to help students respond to each other’s writing. I have used portfolio systems and deferred-grading schemes. I have cajoled; I have encouraged; I have experimented with more rubrics than I can count.

Teller’s conclusion: these strategies rarely work.

One comment on this essay (quoting from and taking issue with a previous comment) signals some of the troubles that beset the world of English:

This is not an “experienced professional” in the field of writing and rhetoric: “English professor” means the person teaches in the English department, and there are many literature professors, as is Mr. Teller, who also have to teach First-year composition. Look to the professionals with credentials in rhetoric and composition to give you a “clear understanding” of the topic.

“As is Mr. Teller?”

How to improve writing (no. 68)

A passage from a piece in the October 10 New Yorker:

But, just five weeks before the election, the race remains close. There are a number of reasons for this, one of them having to do with millennial voters, a demographic that overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and has shown some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.

The phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “There are a number of reasons for this,” “one of them having to do with,” “some allegiance toward Clinton but not much enthusiasm for her.” And it’s unnecessary to identify millennial voters as a demographic: the phrase “millennial voters” itself does so. A possible revision:

But with five weeks before the election, the race remains close, for several reasons. One is that millennial voters, who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, have shown far less enthusiasm for Clinton.

The passage shrinks from forty-eight words to thirty-one. One more:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. Beyond that, a sort of expiration date is reached, owing, at least in part, to the fact that the longer one’s résumé the more likely it is that one will be whipsawed by past positions and changing values.

Here, too, the phrasing in the second sentence is ponderous: “a sort of expiration date,” “at least in part, to the fact that.” And I’m not sure that whipsaw works. Merriam-Webster’s definition: “to beset or victimize in two opposite ways at once, by a two-phase operation, or by the collusive action of two opponents.” In the sentence above, a candidate risks being attacked not in two opposite ways but in one way, because her or his past positions are no longer acceptable. A possible revision:

The journalist Jonathan Rauch has noted that candidates typically have fourteen years from the time they are elected to a major public office — the Senate, a governorship — to achieve the Presidency. After fourteen years, it’s a greater challenge, in part because changing values will make it likely that a candidate’s past positions have become difficult to defend.

The second sentence shrinks from thirty-eight words to twenty-six.

An observation I used to share with my students, from Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage (1966):

Wherever we can make twenty-five words do the work of fifty, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish, and by reducing the span of attention required we increase the force of the thought.

My revisions cut by a third — not a half-price sale, but still a pretty deep discount.

I don’t read New Yorker prose (or any prose I’m not editing) looking for things to change: these passages presented themselves to me (or to my bad-sentence radar) as prose in need of repair.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 68 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

From an old notebook

“There must be some way I can . . . Wait!”

“You must promise to stay here forever.”

“Beauty has to see that beast.”

“We need to see that rose and we need to smell it.”

“Her trees are music.”

[November 1992, while watching the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast . The first two lines are from the movie. The third and fourth are from our son Ben; the fifth from our daughter Rachel.]

Recently updated

Steve Bushakis and Donald Trump The old SNL skit is online.

Advice for creative types

Beatrice Taylor, Aunt Bee, speaks: “Nobody can create on an empty stomach.” From the Mayberry R.F.D. episode “Howard, the Poet” (first aired October 6, 1969).

I like the way everyone in Mayberry calls Aunt Bee Aunt Bee. Except, I suppose, her female friends and occasional suitors, who just call her Bee (or who call her just Bee). But do the other characters know that it’s Aunt Bee , not Aunt Bea ? And just Bee , not Bea? And if so, how? Andy would know, of course. But Emmett? Floyd? Howard? It’s not like they get to sit around and watch the credits.

Must. Eat. Lunch.

Nancy, Sluggo, God

[Zippy , October 4, 20016. If you click for a larger view, the headline in the third panel will be readable.]

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts, Nancy and Zippy posts, Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Please imagine the three links in the form of a Venn diagram.]