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Monthly Archives: November 2006

Novel Hybrids

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Gentle Ben Hur Thrill to the heartwarming saga of a 600 lb. brown bear who befriends a lonely young boy, wins a chariot race, and witnesses the crucifixion of Christ. Little Women Who Run With the Wolves …try valiantly but can’t keep up, which is probably just as well. Suddenly Last Summa Theologica The prolonged [...]

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Sexiest Letter of the Alphabet

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

B Runner-ups:  L and H

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Funny-Looking Words

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

(a work in progress) Adjectives: Berserk Blotto Gassy Eleemosynary Flocculent Verbs: Disembosom Buttress Gainsay Lambaste Nouns: Crabapple Loblolly Kumquat Bomb Blowtorch Botfly Flange Lardoon Galoot Poltroon Spittoon Besom Disembosomee Frottage Onus Larb Phlebotomist Philatelist Nozzle Rumpus Nosegay Yurt Haboob

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Why I Love Automatic Translation

Friday, November 3, 2006

Here’s automatic French-to-English translation on Amazon.fr of part of the page flogging the French version of my Jenny and the Jaws of Life. (I supply the original sentences for the quoted passage from “Melinda Falling.”) She was disconsolate. It was inconsolable. For hours she lay face-down on the living room couch, sobbing wildly, angrily brushing [...]

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Prologue to new novel The Writing Class (to be published June 10, 2008)

Friday, November 3, 2006

THE FAT BROAD lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl briefcase stuffed with old notebooks. A contender once, it’s obvious, she’s got great hair, long and wavy and thick and white gold, but she’s pushing fifty++, pushing two hundred, and she wears polyester fat pants and a [...]

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What you should be reading instead of this

Friday, November 3, 2006

Moby Dick Great Expectations Les Liaisons Dangereuses Anything by Robert Benchley Anything by James Thurber, except his late stuff Ditto by S.J. Perelman “The Young Immigrunts,” by Ring Lardner Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis Nonsense Novels, by Stephen Leacock The Once and Future King, by T.H. White Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis Portable Prairie, by [...]

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