Friday, January 29, 2016

You've Got Less Than 700 Pages --

-- to contain your selection of the most exemplary expository prose ever written, to be published in 1980 and to represent in a way the erudition of the entire world up until then -- and you've chosen to include 5 pieces by Thurber.

No Nietzsche. No Marx or Santayana. No Bellow, Russell, Aristotle, Confucius, Homer, Livy, Bollinger, Kant, Voltaire, Cervantes, no Manns, neither Thomas nor Heinrich nor Klaus nor Erika nor Golo, no Twain [PS, 30. January 2016: I'm very pleased to say that I was mistaken: Mark Twain, cleverly disguised under the name "Samuel L Clemens," DOES in fact appear in the Norton Reader, 5th edition, shorter, dispensing some delightful "Advice to Youth" on pp 436-438.] or either of the James boys, not a single Adams or Lincoln, no Freud, Wittgenstein, Gibbon, Hume, Rousseau, Heidegger, Runciman, Rabelais, Grimmelshausen nor Garcia Marquez, because you felt it necessary to include James Thurber

Five.

Times.

No. It won't do, Norton Reader, 5th edition, shorter!

This will not stand!

No Thucydides! None!

Yeah, Thurber's good.

Kinda.

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