Category: words

Zoë Heller: “The belief that artists are entitled to be morally careless – that great art excuses everything – has proved to be one of the more tenacious parts of our Romantic inheritance.”
Francine Prose: “The landscape of literary history is littered with the wreckage of writers who thought they were on a mission.”

“The dictionary publisher, part of Oxford University Press, was taken to task by the Canadian anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan, after he noticed that the word ‘rabid’, defined by the dictionary as ‘having or proceeding from an extreme or fanatical support of or belief in something’, used the example phrase ‘rabid feminist’. Oman-Reagan tweeted about it to the publisher, suggesting they change it.”

“I’m still me: a person for whom reading has always been a defining feature. I deal with change by reading my way through it.”

“The selected writer – who could be a poet, fiction or “creative non-fiction” author – will receive $10,000 (£7,000) to work in the space for three months, and is expected to “undertake an in-depth exploration of the bridge” and write a literary response to the experience, to coincide with the 100th birthday of the structure in 2017.”

“Iran’s culture ministry has decided to censor the use of the word ‘wine’ and the names of ‘foreign animals’ and dignitaries from any books published in the Islamic Republic. The new rules are designed to protect Iranians from what the regime calls a ‘cultural onslaught’ by the West.”

“One man appeared on state-run Chinese TV saying he’d voluntarily returned to the mainland to face justice in a 2003 drunk-driving case. Meanwhile, the wife of another said she had received a handwritten letter, purportedly from her husband, reiterating that he too had returned to the mainland of his own volition to assist with ‘investigations.’ Both of the men hold European passports.”

“These memoirs hold out the promise that you, too, will be able to cope once the eye of Sauron falls on you. Even if the tips are not practical in nature, often the mere lyricism people are able to bring to their tragic situations serves as its own kind of succor. When it comes your turn, you too may be able to make sense of it all by elegant resort to, say, the French existentialists.”

“Penguin Random House human resources director Neil Morrison said that growing evidence shows there is no simple correlation between having a degree and future professional success … ‘Simply, if you’re talented and you have potential, we want to hear from you. This is the starting point for our concerted action to make publishing far, far more inclusive than it has been to date.”

A language is indeed a dialect with an army and a navy; or, more to the point, a language is a dialect that got put up in the shop window. Yes, people can sit down in a room and decide upon a standardized version of a dialect so that large numbers of people can communicate with maximal efficiency—no more clau, clav, and ciav. But standardization doesn’t make something “better.”

“Folktales are often disregarded as lesser forms of literature, but they’re valuable sources of information on cultural history. Despite being fictitious, they work as simulations of reality.”