BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING

“Reading was such a wonderful thing that to have made a life around the experience was almost criminal and it was so fortunate.”
                          Elizabeth Hardwick

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THE CREATOR OF THE WIZARD OF OZ PREDICTED
THE INVENTION OF THE CELL PHONE

"Baum wrote dozens of other novels and short stories, 
and he had a knack for predicting an impressive number of inventions in his books: the taser, digital calendars, and defibrillators to name a few. In his novel The Master Key, 
a character even discovers an augmented reality gadget that predates Pokémon GO by a century. But Baum’s most notable prediction comes in Ozma of Oz:

"Shaggy … drew from his pocket a tiny instrument which 
he placed against his ear.
  Ozma, observing this action in her Magic Picture, at 
once caught up a similar instrument from a table beside
her and held it to her own ear. The two instruments 
recorded the same delicate vibrations of sound and 
formed a wireless telephone, an invention of the Wizard."

TRIVIA GENIUS December 6, 2022
https://www.triviagenius.com/facts-about-the-wizard-of-oz/XzxcDPaawAAGI7SQ?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1657944838

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ON THE TITLE ILLYWHACKER

Illywhacker is the title of  of a 1985 novel by Peter Cary .
An illwhacker is a conman or trickster. A Dictionary of
Australian Colloquialism says that it is derived from
‘spieler’a ‘teller of tales, swindler.’
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SAMUEL BECKETT

“Beckett’s work is a single holy book, an absolute of poetry 
and negation by whose light all else in contemporary literature appears somewhat superfluous and unclear.”
                            John Updike
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MARK TWAIN & THE PUBLICATION OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

“Mark Twain took a rival publisher, Estes and Laurent, 
to court when they printed Huckleberry Finn before 
his own publishing company could print it. When 
Judge LeBaron Bradford Colt ruled against him in 
the U.S. Circuit Court in Boston, the author was 
so enraged that he publicly condemned Colt.
   “The judge, Twain said. has allowed the defendant 
to ‘sell property which does not belong to him, but 
to me –
\property which he has not bought and I have 
not sold. Therefore, he went on, Under this ruling 
I am now advertising that judge’s homestead for sale,
 and if I make as good a sum out of it, as I expect, 
I shall go on and sell the rest of his property.’”

From Mystery Scene Miscellany in Mystery Scene Magazine
(November 2022)

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Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. 
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.”
                                   Groucho Marx


THE WORLD’S EARLIEST DATED BOOK

“According to the British Library, the Diamond Sutra, 
printed in China in 868 A.D., is the world’s earliest 
dated book.”

David Lemmo. Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture
(Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2017)
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AN ENGLISH TEACHER THROWS
IN THE TOWEL


Great Caesar’s Ghost!
52 yrs old &
I’m finally ploughing my way
Thru Clark Kent’s secret identity.
I’ve had it with cheesy fore flanks
Of Lit Crit.
Literature is meant to fly.

Splatt!  Whapp!  Wopp! Pow!
Time to spatter 
The streets of Metropolis
With finer tints of onomatopoeia.
I tell you I am destined
To leap a tall bildungsroman
In a single bound, 
Bend Lois Lane’s steel body
& her neon mind,

In my Daily Planet arms.

Time to stick dynamite
Up required reading lists!
Read me Action Comics,
With arch-villain Mr Mxyzptlk
Who must be tricked
To say his name backwards
So he’ll be returned 
To the 5th dimension
For 90 days of rebooting.
(How many dimensions
Does a man need to survive?)
Hamlet, with his cheap poisons,
Cannot stop bullets
With his bare hands &
Is not so moral as all this.

Louis Phillips