This little tale, which appears to be a book for children, is actually a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change. Beginning slowly, the Cat proceeds to take everything apart, make a total mess and get everybody in potentially the worst trouble in the world — all at no personal cost to itself. By the time the Cat leaves, it has frightened everybody, and very little has changed except the mind-set of the protagonists, which has been forever disrupted and rattled. — Stanley Bing, reviewing The Cat in the Hat Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Books
How Homework Gets Done at My House
My son’s reading Catherine, Called Birdy for his 7th grade Language Arts class. The book is set in medieval England and written in the form of a 14-year-old girl’s diary. “It’s got no theme, no plot, no flow, no fun, no nothing!” the boy says. “It’s gay!” I sympathize with him — it reads like a 13th century MySpace blog — but that doesn’t change the fact that he has to read it. “I refuse to read this book!” he says. “You can’t,” his mom replies. “I have a restraining order! Catherine has to stay 10 feet away from me.” And he tosses the book into the middle of the living room. I look over at my wife . . . her eyes are now closed and she’s biting on her lower lip, accompanied by a slow, dramatic intake of breath, all of which suggests that clowntime is just about… Read more →
Happiness
In the early 1970s, when a friend and I were newly hatched social psychologists, we decided to write a book on happiness. The head of an eminent Boston publishing house took pity on us and, over lunch, explained the facts of life. ‘No one wants to read a book on happiness’, he said kindly. ‘Happy people don’t; why in the world would they want to? They are already happy. Unhappy people don’t want to, either. Why in the world would they want to read about happy people when they are feeling sullen and miserable? Moreover, it’s faintly embarrassing to be seen on a bus or park bench reading a book on happiness. It’s like being caught reading a book on paedophilia. A passer-by will question your motives.’ And so my friend and I went our separate ways; he to write a book on loneliness, and I, a book on anger.… Read more →
Prolific Authors
George Murray, a poet and co-editor of the literary blog Bookninja.com, sees the near-annual release of a new Stephen King novel as ‘the literary equivalent of watching a skinny Japanese dude scarf down 100 hot dogs in an eating contest; you are kind of grossed out, but gotta hand it to him.’ Murray harbors a unique theory about what distinguishes a genre writer like King from a so-called serious artist like Joyce Carol Oates. ‘It seems with Oates the hotdog eater is a performance artist commenting on the nature of consumption and American hegemony,’ Murray avers. ‘With King it’s just a guy eating 100 hot dogs, then looking like he’s going to die of nitrate poisoning.’ — CBC.ca, “Automated Storyteller” Read more →
The Blog of Anne Frank
. . . everything can be taken from a man except one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. — Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. — Anne Frank On this date — September 2 — in 1944, Anne Frank was among 1,019 people on the 68th and last train from Holland to Auschwitz. Anne and others hiding with her had been betrayed and captured a month before and held in the Westerbork detention center. Read more →
Look Homeward, Angel
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly, we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved ghost, come back again. — Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward,… Read more →
Role Model
My son is reading a biography of John Lennon. Here’s what he got out of it so far: “John Lennon got all Cs in school.” I think his mom is going to take the book away from him . . . Read more →
Rent-A-Book
DAD: What are you reading? 10-YEAR-OLD: It’s a book I rented from the library. DAD: You don’t rent books from the library, you check them out. 10-YEAR-OLD: Whatever. Read more →
Dogfood
NEW YORK (AP) — Olivia Goldsmith, a best-selling novelist whose book First Wives Club was made into a movie starring Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, has died. She was 54. Goldsmith had been in a coma since last Wednesday after complications resulting from anesthesia during plastic surgery . . . Read more →
Pursuit
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.’ — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby That we pursue something passionately does not always mean that we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety. In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued. — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do Read more →
A Bruce Lee Christmas
I’ve been reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, in which he says that most athletes are not willing to drive themselves hard enough, and that only through extraordinary effort can one unlock the potential of the human body. Read more →
A Damnable Doctrine
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. — The Autobiography of Charles Darwin Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published on this date in 1859. Read more →
Why Great Novels Are Not Written by 10-Year-Olds
And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean. — Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son And so, on page 243 of a 900-page novel, the 6-year-old Son referred to in the title dies! “So what’s the rest of the book going to be about?” I wonder aloud. “Your butt,” my son suggests. Read more →
Burning Down the House
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden We’ve got a number of uncontrolled fires burning in Southern California. It’s raining ash out of a darkened sky in Orange County, where I live, although we’re nowhere near the actual fires. Read more →
HW’s Book Reviews
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter C.P.A. And I know a father who had a son He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he’d done He came a long way just to explain He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping Then he turned around and he headed home again — Paul Simon, “Slip Sliding Away” Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. — John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester You might get the idea from reading this book that being rich is synonymous with being happy. I’ve never seen any indication that that’s true. Read more →
“Hiring the Best” Explained
An employer is always somewhat reassured by the ignominiousness of his staff. At all costs the slave should be slightly, even much, to be despised. A mass of chronic blemishes, moral and physical, are a justification of the fate which is overwhelming him. The world gets along better that way, because then each man stands in it in the place he deserves. A being who is useful to you should be low, flat, prone to weakness; that is what’s comforting; especially as Baryton paid us really very badly. In cases of acute avarice like this, employers are always a bit suspicious and uneasy. A failure, a debauchee, a black sheep, a devoted black sheep, all that made sense, justified things, fitted in, in fact. Baryton would have been on the whole rather pleased if I had been slightly wanted by the police. That always makes for real devotion. — Louis-Ferdinand… Read more →
The Modern Critic
‘This book [Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex] encourages children to have sex, and that is very, very dangerous,’ Bill O’Reilly said on his show. He also provided a sampling of the complaints against the book, calling it ‘vile,’ ‘disgusting,’ ‘insane,’ ‘perverted,’ ‘sick stuff,’ ‘outrageous,’ and ‘evil.’ (He also admitted on air that he hasn’t read it.) [Emph. added] — Hannah Rosin, “Lust Busters” Read more →
Teaching Kids to Write
Having students write essays about books accomplishes three things. It makes them hate writing, because it’s such a fruitless, uninteresting assignment. It makes them hate reading, because even books they enjoy are turned against them. And it probably makes them hate thinking, because the kind of analysis they’re forced to do is so strained and dull. — Joseph Weisberg Read more →
Got a Minute?
Book-A-Minute Movie-A-Minute Read more →
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips — producer (The Sting, Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), author ( You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again), cocaine addict — dies of cancer in West Hollywood, Ca. She was 57. Her book, a memoir of life in Tinseltown, made her an icon and a pariah simultaneously. “I wasn’t a pariah because I was a drug-addicted . . . rotten person [but] because I lit them with a harsh fluorescent light and rendered them as contemptible as they truly are.” Read more →