My favorite is "an idiot child screaming in a hospital."
My all-time favorite put-down is a story by Sinclair Lewis about himself. He was watching an older lady reading one of his books during an ocean-liner journey across the Atlantic. He watched with great interest as the woman clearly was getting close to a controversial passage in the novel. As he watched, the woman got up, walked to the railing, and flung the book far out to sea.
It's not odd everyone doesn't know all the authors mentioned. But, it's odd for a young woman who makes her living reviewing books (even if on YouTube) to not have some kind of decent background in lit. These folks who aren't sure about Robert Lewis Stevenson, and don't know several of the others are products of the fruits of my very own retirement tax dollars. Arizona has horrible schools. (I can't blame today's teachers for not dwelling on Ezra Pound, who defected to Mussolini's Italy.)
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My all-time favorite put-down is a story by Sinclair Lewis about himself. He was watching an older lady reading one of his books during an ocean-liner journey across the Atlantic. He watched with great interest as the woman clearly was getting close to a controversial passage in the novel. As he watched, the woman got up, walked to the railing, and flung the book far out to sea.
It's not odd everyone doesn't know all the authors mentioned. But, it's odd for a young woman who makes her living reviewing books (even if on YouTube) to not have some kind of decent background in lit. These folks who aren't sure about Robert Lewis Stevenson, and don't know several of the others are products of the fruits of my very own retirement tax dollars. Arizona has horrible schools. (I can't blame today's teachers for not dwelling on Ezra Pound, who defected to Mussolini's Italy.)