BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING

MARK TWAIN’S LOW OPINION OF JAMES
FENIMORE COOPER’S THE DEERSLAYER 


“In one place Deerslayer, and in the restricted space 
of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses 
against literary art out of 115. It breaks the record.”

Mark Twain. How to Tell a Story and other essays
(1897)

See The Book of Lists  by David Wallechinsky and 
Amy Wallace (New York: Cannongate, 2005)
**

TALLULAH BANKHEAD & THE FIRST BOOK TO MAKE AN
IMPRESSION UPON HER

“The first book to make an impression
 on me was 
Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I was a sponge for Shakespeare’s 
poetry. It wasn’t long before I was spouting, 
‘Romeo, Romeo!  wherefore art thou,
 Romeo?...Thou knowest the mask of night is on my 
face; else would a maiden blush’ and ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, 
not to 
praise him…’

Tullalah Bankhead. Tallulah: My Autobiography (NewYork:
Harper & Row, 1952)
**

THE 6½ OLD PETER (PIRA) IN THE NOVEL
THE STONE WORLD by JOEL AGEE

“One of his favorite books was Just So Stories. 
Every once in awhile, the person telling the 
stories said ‘Best Beloved’ or ‘O Best Beloved,’ 
and at those moments Pira always felt a special 
pleasure, as if he was being addressed in the
 most kind and respectful way imaginable. The way 
the words were capitalized made them look even 
grander than they sounded. The ‘O’when it came,
was like the bow you make before a king: ‘O 
best beloved!”

Joel Agee. The Stone World (Brooklyn: 
Melville House, 2020)
**
THE WASP & THE EXTERMINATOR 

“ Writers and editors don’t like seeing their 
idiosyncrasies in print any more than anyone else 
does, and it obviously does no good to point out 
to them that putting other people’s idiosyncrasies 
into print is how most writers make their livings. 
The wasp does not excuse the exterminator because 
they’re both in the same business.”

Louis Menand. “A Friend Writes: The Old New Yorker”:
In American  Studies (New York: Farrar, Straus and 
Giroux, 2002)

**
ON RECEIVING A BAD REVIEW

“A bad review is even less important than whether 
it is raining in Patagonia.”
                           Iris Murdoch

**

FILM DIRECTOR ANG LEE AND THE NOVELIST
WANG DULU

“I’m an admirer of the novelist, Wang Dulu, who wrote 
a lot of martial-arts fiction – which was very popular 
when I was growing up in Taiwan. Most of the genre is 
pulp fiction, but Crouching Tiger was something else: 
even though the characters could fly, [the story]  
was grounded in reality. Usually, the female characters 
[in such tales] are  very passive; here the main woman 
is very active and very rebellious. That made it very interesting.”   Ang Lee

David E. Williams. “Enter the Dragon” in American Cinematographer , volume 82, no. 1 (January 2001).
Reprinted in Ang Lee Interviews, edited by Karla 
Rae Fuller (Jackson, Mississippi: University of 
Mississippi: Press, 2016)

**

TIM O'BRIEN & TRUE WAR STORIES

“In the end,” (TIM)  O’Brien writes, “a true war story 
is never about war. It’s about the special way that dawn
spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the 
river and march into the mountains and do things you are 
afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about 
sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and 
people who never listen.” It’s about life, the vast 
and short and incomprehensible experience that ends 
for all of us before we really apprehend its meaning.

 David Mason, "War and Imagination" in THE HUDSON REVIEW 
(WINTER 2022)

**

HOW THE WORD POETRY IS OFTEN USED IN CRITICISM

…it is of some help to remember that in the code 
language of criticism when a poem is said to be 
about poetry the word ‘poetry’  is often used to
 mean: how people construct an intelligibility 
out of the randomness they experience; how people 
integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience 
by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate 
flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise 
endless) achieve what Keats called a ‘Soul or
Intelligence destined to possess the sense of 
identity.“It is worth quoting once more Keats’ 
description of this world not as a vale of what 
he called ‘soul-making.’’

Helen Vendler. “Understanding Ashbery” in The 
New Yorker (March 16, 1981)

**

TOM SWIFT & HIS HIS MOTOR CYCLE

For other uses, see Tom Swift (disambiguation).
 
Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle (1910), the first 
Tom Swift book. Tom Swift is the main character 
of six series of American juvenile science fiction 
and adventure novels that emphasize science, 
invention, and technology. First published in 1910, 
the series totals more than 100 volumes. The 
character was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the 
founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book 
packaging firm. Tom's adventures have been 
written by various ghostwriters, beginning with 
Howard Garis. Most of the books are credited 
to then to to the collective pseudonym "Victor 
Appleton. 
   "Tom Swift has been cited as an inspiration 
by various scientists and inventors, including 
aircraft designer Kelly Johnson."


from Wikipedia
**

MARK TWAIN’S LOW OPINION OF JAMES
FENIMORE COOPER’S THE DEERSLAYER


“In one place Deerslayer, and in the restricted space
of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses
against literary art out of 115. It breaks the record.”

Mark Twain. How to Tell a Story and other essays
(1897)

See The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and
Amy Wallace (New York: Cannongate, 2005)
**

TALLULAH BANKHEAD & THE FIRST BOOK TO MAKE AN
IMPRESSION UPON HER

“The first book to make an impression
on me was
Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I was a sponge for Shakespeare’s
poetry. It wasn’t long before I was spouting,
‘Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou,
Romeo?…Thou knowest the mask of night is on my
face; else would a maiden blush’ and ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar,
not to
praise him…’

Tullalah Bankhead. Tallulah: My Autobiography (NewYork:
Harper & Row, 1952)
**

THE 6½ OLD PETER (PIRA) IN THE NOVEL
THE STONE WORLD by JOEL AGEE

“One of his favorite books was Just So Stories.
Every once in awhile, the person telling the
stories said ‘Best Beloved’ or ‘O Best Beloved,’
and at those moments Pira always felt a special
pleasure, as if he was being addressed in the
most kind and respectful way imaginable. The way
the words were capitalized made them look even
grander than they sounded. The ‘O’when it came,
was like the bow you make before a king: ‘O
best beloved!”

Joel Agee. The Stone World (Brooklyn:
Melville House, 2020)
**
THE WASP & THE EXTERMINATOR

“ Writers and editors don’t like seeing their
idiosyncrasies in print any more than anyone else
does, and it obviously does no good to point out
to them that putting other people’s idiosyncrasies
into print is how most writers make their livings.
The wasp does not excuse the exterminator because
they’re both in the same business.”

Louis Menand. “A Friend Writes: The Old New Yorker”:
In American Studies (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2002)

**
ON RECEIVING A BAD REVIEW

“A bad review is even less important than whether
it is raining in Patagonia.”
Iris Murdoch

**

FILM DIRECTOR ANG LEE AND THE NOVELIST
WANG DULU

“I’m an admirer of the novelist, Wang Dulu, who wrote
a lot of martial-arts fiction – which was very popular
when I was growing up in Taiwan. Most of the genre is
pulp fiction, but Crouching Tiger was something else:
even though the characters could fly, [the story]
was grounded in reality. Usually, the female characters
[in such tales] are very passive; here the main woman
is very active and very rebellious. That made it very interesting.” Ang Lee

David E. Williams. “Enter the Dragon” in American Cinematographer , volume 82, no. 1 (January 2001).
Reprinted in Ang Lee Interviews, edited by Karla
Rae Fuller (Jackson, Mississippi: University of
Mississippi: Press, 2016)

**

TIM O’BRIEN & TRUE WAR STORIES

“In the end,” (TIM) O’Brien writes, “a true war story
is never about war. It’s about the special way that dawn
spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the
river and march into the mountains and do things you are
afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about
sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and
people who never listen.” It’s about life, the vast
and short and incomprehensible experience that ends
for all of us before we really apprehend its meaning.

David Mason, “War and Imagination” in THE HUDSON REVIEW
(WINTER 2022)

**