Books – Page 3 – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Language, Letters

Language

• Bonnie Ruberg wrote about cybersex in a column for the Village Voice. After she got a Macintosh computer with a built-in camera, she took some photographs of her naked self and showed them to a male online friend, who praised her body but wrote this rather odd comment: “I really like your breasts. They look so light and fluffy.” Ms. Ruberg writes, “Light and fluffy? Those are adjectives I use to describe scrambled eggs, not breasts. … Ever since, breakfast hasn’t been quite the same.”

• Mark Twain was a true original. He lived for years in Hartford, Connecticut, whose most learned citizen was J. Hammond Trumbull. Mr. Twain was very impressed by him because he knew how to use profanity in 27 languages. By the way, while Mr. Twain was living in Hartford, he attended a baseball game at which a boy stole his umbrella. Mr. Twain offered two rewards: $5 for the umbrella, and $200 for the boy’s corpse.

• When they were children, young people’s author William Sleator and Vicky, his sister, had a sandbox in the backyard. Unfortunately, the sandbox was very attractive to cats and dogs for a very unattractive reason. One day, a lady visited and told the children, “Oh, what a lovely sand pile you two children have to play in!” Five-year-old Vicky replied, “That’s not a sand pile. It’s a sh*t pit.”

Letters

• Many, many readers have loved Anne Shirley, the outspoken young red-haired orphan who speaks her mind and comes to live with the elderly Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert on Prince Edward Island in Canada in the novel Anne of Green Gables — and in many other novels. Of course, many, many readers have sent letters to Ms. Montgomery — and to Anne Shirley. A letter that was addressed to “Miss Anne Shirley c/o Miss Marilla Cuthbert, Avonlea, P.E.I., Canada, Ontario,” made its way to Ms. Montgomery. Another letter came from Mark Twain, author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, who told her that Anne was “the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice [in Wonderland].”

• As you would expect, Noel Coward was witty in real life. Lawrence of Arabia once included his full Royal Air Force number at the head of a letter to him. Mr. Coward wrote back, “Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)….” Mr. Coward also signed many letters in very friendly ways — two examples are “Love and mad mad kisses” and “Love, love, love, love, love.” By the way, in a review of On The Letters of Noël Coward, edited and with commentary by Barry Day, Daniel Mendelsohn wrote that Mr. Coward’s philosophy of living “prized above all the importance of snatching happiness in a world filled with emotional confusion imposed from without and exploding from within….”

• When Dr. Benjamin Spock was asked in 1943 to write a baby- and child-care book, he agreed, believing that he had the necessary skill to write such a book. One reason he had this skill was because his mother made him and his siblings write letters to her while they were away from home attending school. Dr. Spock explained, “My mother always made us write letters from school twice a week, and she would get angry if the letters were too short. I was accustomed to writing, so I enjoyed doing the book very much.” Of course, the Dr. Spock baby book — The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care — sold millions of copies and made him famous.

• Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, was a perfect gentleman. According to one writer, “Even his letters of rejection were so complimentary that they had to be read twice to discover whether he was making a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize or expressing regret.” For example, writer Paul Gallico once received this rejection notice from Mr. Crowninshield. “My dear Paul, this is superb. A little masterpiece! What color! What life! How beautifully you have phrased it all! A veritable gem! — Why don’t you take it around to Harper’s Bazaar?”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Inspiration, Insults, Language

Inspiration

• David Jenkins has twice been used as a character in a book, including a character who is balding, portly, and American in The Paradise Trail by his friend Duncan Campbell, although Mr. Jenkins had a full head of flowing locks, a flat stomach, and a Welsh heritage — a heritage he still has. Therefore, Mr. Jenkins asks, “But however grand a role you play in however important a book, does it encapsulate the real person?” For example, Hubert Duggan is a real person who appears (under names other than his own) in two important novels: A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, and Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. In A Dance to the Music of Time, he is “dashing but doomed.” And Mr. Waugh helped Mr. Duggan return to the Catholic faith when Mr. Duggan was on his deathbed, a scene that appears in Brideshead Revisited. It seems that Mr. Duggan must be inspiring, as he inspired two novelists to write about him. So what was he like in real life? The late 6^th Marquess of Bath, who knew Mr. Duggan well, says, “He was the most boring man I met in my entire life.”

• Brian Garfield is the author of Death Wish, a novel about a man who becomes a vigilante after hoodlums rape his daughter and murder his wife. It became a very popular film starring Charles Bronson, who also starred in four sequels. Mr. Garfield got the idea for the novel after discovering that someone had used a knife to slash the canvas top of his convertible. The night was cold, he had a two- or three-hour drive home, and as he drove, he was thinking, “I’ll kill the son of a b*tch.” Mr. Garfield says, “Of course by the time I got home and thawed out, I realized the vandal must have had a strong sharp knife (convertible-top canvas is a very tough fabric to cut) and in reality I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. But then came the thought: What if a person had that kind of experience and got mad and never came out of it?” Writing the novel came easy to him — it took two weeks. Mr. Garfield jokes, “Several alleged friends asked, ‘What took so long?’”

• When he was a young boy, Samuel Langhorne Clemens saw a piece of paper flying down the street. He chased after it, caught it, and discovered that the page came from a biography of Joan of Arc. He asked his brother who she was, discovered that she was a French heroine who had died by being burned at the stake, and started reading as much as he could about her. As an adult, he wrote a book titled Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, using his world-famous pseudonym, Mark Twain.

Insults

• An Irishwoman asked William Makepeace Thackeray for alms. He put his hand in his pocket and she said, “May the blessing of God follow you all your life” — but when she saw that Mr. Thackeray was taking only his snuff box out of his pocket, she added, “and never overtake you!”

• Jonathan Swift was walking along a narrow pathway when he met a young man who stood in the middle of the pathway. The young man sneered at Dean Swift and said, “I never get out of the way of fools.” Dean Swift replied, “I always do,” and walked around the young man.

Language

• According to Mem Fox, the Australian author of the children’s book Possum Magic, Americans don’t swear as much as Australians do. In an American elementary classroom, Mem was talking about her writing process, saying that her first drafts were “crappy,” but she didn’t give a “damn” because she knew that she could rewrite the first draft and make it better. Hearing these two words, the shocked schoolchildren covered their mouths with their hands and looked at their teacher to see how she would react. Mem’s reaction was to blush, knowing as she did that she could have used two words much worse than the two she did use.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Happiness, Husbands and Wives

Note: Most of the anecdotes in this collection are funny, although some are thought provoking rather than funny.

Happiness

• When gay author Michael Thomas Ford was invited to his high school reunion, he thought about how miserable his classmates had made him feel as the class queer, and he wrote back, “Michael Thomas Ford is very proud to announce that he is still queer, despite the best attempts of his schoolmates to convince him that it is an unacceptable lifestyle. He would also like to take this opportunity to tell everyone he went to school with that he is happier, more successful, and a great deal more attractive than they are.”

• Author Dory Previn used to drive around at night and look at houses with brightly lit windows. She always told herself about anyone who lived in one of these houses, “That person has found the secret to happiness.” One day, she got lost and she saw a house with a brightly lit window. Again, she told herself about the resident, “That person has found the secret to happiness.” When she got closer, she recognized the house — she lived in it.

Husbands and Wives

• C.S. Lewis’ wife, Joy, could be very plain spoken. For example, at an Oxford faculty lunch, Joy did not know where the ladies room was, so she asked, “Is there anywhere in this monastic establishment where a lady can relieve herself?” Another example: She died of cancer, and she once said that she had “so many cancers at work that I expect them to start organizing a union.” Her husband knew that he also had not much longer to live, and he asked her to meet him — if it were allowed — when he died. She replied, “Allowed? Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I’d break it into bits.” Before she died, she spoke comfortingly to her husband with her last words: “I am at peace with God. You have made me happy.”

• This anecdote is touching rather than funny. At one time, Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho and his second wife were kidnapped and tortured. Once, he was in a bathroom at the torture building, and his wife, who was in the cubicle next to his and whom he could hear but not see, said, “If you’re Paulo, speak to me, please.” However, he was too terrified to speak. Today, Mr. Coelho tearfully says, “It was the most cowardly day of my life, which I’ll regret as long as I live.” When they got out of the torture building, his wife requested that he never again say her name. Today, when Mr. Coelho speaks of her, he calls her “my wife who shall be nameless.”

• Being the wife of someone famous can be difficult. Mr. and Mrs. John Steinbeck were at a party when movie actress Zsa Zsa Gabor swept in, recognized the famous author, came over to him, and said, “You are the one man I have wanted to meet for oh, so long!” She then proceeded to talk to Mr. Steinbeck and to ignore Mrs. Steinbeck. Finally, no longer able to stand it, Mrs. Steinbeck inserted herself into the space between Ms. Gabor and her husband, and she said, “I am Mrs. Steinbeck.” Ms. Gabor thereafter focused her attention on someone other than Mrs. Steinbeck’s husband.

• Novelist Walter Tevis (author of The Hustler, The Color of Money, and The Man Who Fell to Earth) occasionally fooled around with oil paints. One night, he created a painting on the kitchen wall of Mount Rushmore — but the faces on the mountain were of himself, his wife, and their two children. His wife told him, “This painting has got to go” — and she made him paint over it.

• H.L. Mencken once told a group of friends at a party, “When I was a youngster in Baltimore, the girls in the sporting houses used to call me Professor.” His host’s wife, Betty Compson, looked at him closely, then joked, “I thought your face was familiar.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Good Deeds

Good Deeds

• After the death of her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, punk rocker Patti Smith was understandably devastated. One person who helped her to move on was Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who telephoned her and advised, “Let go of the spirit of the departed and continue your life’s celebration.” He felt that performing would be good for her and invited her to go with him to Ann Arbor to read their poetry at a benefit to raise money for the Jewel Heart, a Tibetan Buddhist organization. Before extending the invitation to Ms. Smith, Mr. Ginsberg had already sold out all 4,000 seats available, so he wasn’t inviting Ms. Smith to perform so he could get a big audience; instead, his invitation was one of compassion and generosity.

• When African-American author James Baldwin was growing up, a white teacher named Orilla “Bill” Miller encouraged him by taking him to plays and movies. And when young James’ adoptive father, David Baldwin, had a hard time getting work, Ms. Miller helped in a big way by giving the Baldwin family gifts of such necessities as food. In part because of Ms. Miller, James did not fall into the trap of hating all white people. A grown-up James Baldwin once said, “It is certainly partly because of her that I never really managed to hate white people.”

• As a little girl, Emma Lazarus was given a good education, but because her parents were wealthy, she learned little about lower-class people. After seeing her parents give money to a woman, she asked why they had done that. They explained that the woman was poor, and young Emma, not understanding, had to ask them what the word “poor” meant. Later, the adult Ms. Lazarus became a champion of poor people. Her poem “The New Colossus” graces the base of the Statue of Liberty.

• Novelists can be brave. When Charles Dickens was 53 years old, he was traveling by train when the engineer received a wrong signal and crashed. Mr. Dickens’ train car teetered above some wrecked train cars that were lying in a ravine. Mr. Dickens was able to get out and help some of the injured by bringing them water, and later, when he remembered that he had left the manuscript of his book Our Mutual Friend in the teetering train car, he climbed back in and retrieved it.

• This anecdote is touching rather than funny. In the early 1960s, poet Allen Ginsberg and his sometimes lover Peter Orlovsky took a trip to India. There they found a man who was almost dead from starvation and around whom flies were buzzing. His eyes were yellow with pus, and his wounds were festering. They took care of the man and paid for his medical care, and the man became healthy again. Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Orlovsky also did this for some other starving people.

• When Yousuf Karsh set up an appointment to take Norman Mailer’s photograph, he was warned that the author of The Naked and the Dead was someone to be feared: an enfant terrible. However, he found Mr. Mailer to be a very warm person. After the photography session was over, Mr. Mailer even drove his car in front of Mr. Karsh’s car for several miles so that Mr. Karsh would be sure to take the correct road back to New York City.

• William Weightman, a curate and a friend to the family of the Brontës — including Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre; Emily, author of Wuthering Weights; and Anne, author of Agnes Grey — was a kind man. He discovered that none of the three women had ever received a valentine, so he wrote a poem and made a card for each sister. To mail them, he walked 10 miles!

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Gays and Lesbians, Good Deeds

Note: Some anecdotes are not funny, but can be interesting nonetheless.

Gays and Lesbians

• Marion Dane Bauer once invited fellow young adult writers to submit short stories for a book about gay teenagers. Bruce Coville wrote “Am I Blue?” — which became the title story of the book, whose full title is Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence. Mr. Coville is a happily married heterosexual, and his story is about a narrator who is beaten up by the school bully, Butch, because Butch thinks that the narrator is gay. An effeminate fairy godfather named Melvin visits the narrator and gives him the power of seeing whether someone is gay. A person who is totally gay will be dark blue, and a person who is wondering if he or she is gay will be light blue. The narrator’s skin is light blue, and as he looks around he sees that a man whom everyone “knows” is straight is dark blue and he sees that a woman whom everyone “knows” is a lesbian is not blue at all. When the narrator looks at Butch, he sees that Butch is dark blue.

• Buffy Summers, the lead character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, made headlines, including in the New York Times, when she slept with a lesbian in a comic-book story in 2008, although Buffy creator and writer Josh Whedon says that Buffy is not lesbian, but only experimenting. Of course, the Buffy character Willow is lesbian, and Mr. Whedon has long been a friend of the gay and lesbian community. When Willow came out as lesbian in the TV series, a homophobic former fan posted a message on the Internet saying that he would never watch the show again. Mr. Whedon responded, “We’ll miss you.”

Good Deeds

• In 1949, at age 12, young people’s author Peg Kehret got polio, and she spent a lot of time in hospitals. Her parents visited her, and they met her roommates, including one girl named Alice who had lived at the hospital for 10 years, ever since she had gotten polio at age three. Alice’s parents could not afford to take care of her, and so she had become a ward of the state. Alice very seldom got visitors, but fortunately Peg’s parents often visited her, and they promised to bring treats to the other girls as well as to her. Peg’s parents asked the other girls what they wanted, and they wanted such things as marshmallows and candy and comic books. Alice did not respond to the request for a treat, and Peg realized that Alice had lived in the hospital for so long that she didn’t know about many things that children considered to be treats. Some of Peg’s roommates also joked that fellow polio victim and roommate Dorothy wanted a tall, dark, handsome young man. The following week Peg’s parents returned with the treats, including a pink lipstick for Alice. As for Dorothy, Peg’s tall, dark-haired, handsome, 18-year-old brother (he had recently been voted Campus Dreamboat by a sorority) paid her a special visit and gave her some licorice.

• In Holland, Miep and Jan Gies hid Jews from the Nazis. To get the food necessary to feed so many people, they made many trips to different stores, where they purchased small amounts of food because they were afraid to draw attention to themselves by purchasing a large amount of food all at once. However, a grocer saw how much food they were buying, so he began to give them extra vegetables. Later, they discovered why the grocer was so helpful to them. He also was hiding Jews, and unfortunately, he was caught and arrested. The Jews that Miep and Jan Gies were hiding were also discovered and taken away to concentration camps — only Otto Frank survived. Miep and Jan Gies gave him the diary of Anne, his daughter, which they had saved. He had it published, and The Diary of Anne Frank became an international best seller.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Food

Food

• On summer weekends, the family of William Sleator, who grew up to write novels for young adults, often went on float trips down a river in the Ozarks. Once, a student of William’s father came on the trip, bringing some fried chicken that was loosely wrapped in waxed paper and placed in a wicker basket. Everybody ate the fried chicken on Sunday — until William’s father held up a white grub that he had found under the skin of his piece of fried chicken. William’s father explained that flies had easily gotten to the chicken through the wicker basket and waxed paper and had laid their eggs on the chicken. The eggs had hatched and now little white grubs were crawling around. Of course, William’s father pointed out that the grubs were harmless and actually a good source of protein, but everyone stopped eating the chicken — except for William’s father, who enjoyed a very large lunch.

• Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Cottontail, loved animals, but she did use them for meat. Some Girl Guides (the British equivalent of Girl Scouts) once camped on her land. She thought that they looked very thin and perhaps malnourished because of food shortages during World War II, so she had a sheep slaughtered so that they could eat meat. Ms. Potter was fortunate that she lived on a farm during the war and that she had fans all over the world — fans who sent her scarce kinds of food, such as lemon juice. She also raised rabbits on her land because she was afraid that during World War II she would not be able to buy food for her dogs. Ms. Potter did care for her animals. She once spent a cold and wet November day gathering acorns so that she could give a treat to her pigs.

• In his book Roughing It, Mark Twain tells a story that was old in 1872. A traveler sat down at a table on which was nothing but mackerel and mustard. The traveler asked, “Is that all there is?” The landlord replied, “All!Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel enough there for six people.” The traveler said, “But I don’t like mackerel.” The landlord was silent a moment, then said, “Oh — then help yourself to the mustard.”

• Marion Zimmer Bradley, along with such people as Ann Bannon and Patricia Highsmith, got her start as an author by writing lesbian pulp fiction. As you may expect, times were sometimes rough as these people sought to establish careers as writers. Ms. Bannon remembers that one of Ms. Bradley’s meals consisted of crackers, heated-up ketchup, and salt and pepper.

• A man once asked Mark Twain if he had caught any fish lately. Mr. Twain said that he had caught 12 trout the day before. Hearing this, the man said, “Obviously, you don’t know who I am. I am a game warden, and the season for catching trout is over.” Mr. Twain replied, “Obviously, you don’t know who I am. I am the biggest liar in the world.”

• When Yoshiko Uchida, author of Journey to Topaz, was a little girl, she visited her grandmother, who never let any food go to waste. Soon, young Yoshiko got into the same habit. When her grandmother offered her a choice of fruit — a banana or a peach, for example — Yoshiko would ask, “Which one’s spoiling?” Then she would eat that fruit.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Fathers, Food

Fathers

• Anthony Horowitz, author of the popular Alex Rider series of children’s books about a teenage spy, grew up in an unusual family. His father was wealthy, but old fashioned and strict. The author says that when he was a kid, he had to “sing” for his supper. He didn’t literally have to sing, but he did have to be an entertaining and witty conversationalist. He says, “If I were insufficiently entertaining, I’d be summarily dismissed.” His mother was a socialite who told him horror stories. He once asked her to give him a human skull, and for his 13^th birthday, she did. Today, that skull rests on his desk. Unfortunately, his father seems to have been on the fringes of legality, and the family lost all of its money because his father, in financial difficulty, moved all of their money to a secret bank account, then died without having told anybody where the secret bank account was located or under which fictitious name it had been established. This meant that the author’s mother went from being a rich society lady to working as a company secretary. However, the author says that the last 10 years of her life were among the happiest of her life, despite her lack of money.

• Alice Walker’s father, Willie Lee, wanted her to tell the truth. One day when she was a small child, she broke a fruit jar — a terrible thing for a young child to do. Her father asked her if she was the one who had broken the fruit jar. Young Alice hesitated, wondering if she should tell the truth and take her punishment or lie and try to get out of being punished. She made her decision, and she admitted that she had broken the fruit jar. Her father was so pleased that she had told the truth that he did not punish her; instead, he gave her a hug. As an adult Ms. Walker says, “It was at that moment that I resolved to take my chances with the truth.”

• Children’s book author Jane Yolen’s 22^nd birthday was special. On that day, Pirates in Petticoats, her first book, was accepted for publication. She ran to her father to tell him, and he celebrated by buying alcoholic drinks for everyone — except Jane. She was his little girl, and so, even though she was 22 years old, he bought her a Coke.

Food

• Michael Pollen has written The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, two very popular books about food. In them, he criticizes processed food and recommends that people follow this advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (By “food,” he means real, not processed, food.) Of course, he has been interviewed many times, sometimes at his home, and occasionally journalists and photographers have looked inside his refrigerator and pantry — with or without permission — to see what he eats. Once, a photographer arrived for the interview 20 minutes early. Mr. Pollen remembers, “He said, ‘I’ll just wait in the kitchen,’ and when I walked into the house, there he was, going through the fridge, deciding whether he wanted to photograph it. And he may well have taken pictures of it.” Apparently, these snoopy reporters and photographers are trying to find where Mr. Pollen hides the Oreos. Mr. Pollen does admit that some foods found in his home are not going to be health enhancing, but he explains, “I’m not the only person who lives in this house. I have a son, and he brings in a certain amount of contraband, and I don’t dictate to my family if they want to eat other stuff. And, you know, I’m not a zealot … we all lapse, and there will always be junk foods we have a weakness for. It seems to me that, if that’s all it is, that’s fine. It’s really just eating that stuff every day that you get into trouble.”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Fans, Fathers

Fans

• When young people’s author Robert Cormier wrote I Am the Cheese, he included a telephone number. He realized that some readers of the novel would call that number, and because he didn’t want anyone else to be bothered, he decided to use his own telephone number in his novel. In 1987, ten years after the novel had been published, Mr. Cormier said that many, many young people have called his number — at least one per day. He became long-time friends with many of the callers, and he said that absolutely none of the calls were abusive. In ten years, he had never received an obscene call, a wise-guy call, or a middle-of-the-night call. This he correctly pointed out is a tribute to his young readers.

• What fans say to start conversations with famous authors can be interesting. At a book fair, a fan approached British crime novelist Val McDermid and told her, “Do you know that from behind you look just like Jacques Derrida?” Of course, crime novelists have other kinds of interesting experiences. While doing research for one of her crime books, Ms. McDermid visited a museum with exhibits of medieval implements of torture. She says, “The thing that freaked me out was not the damage they could do but the fact that they were beautifully made. That is what made the hairs stand up on the back of my head — that people had taken the time to make these things beautiful.”

• J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have been extremely popular with children. In fact, when Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was first released for sale in Great Britain on July 8, 1999, the publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, ordered that the book not be sold until 3:45 p.m. — after school had been let out. Otherwise, Bloomsbury Publishing was afraid that children would skip school in order to buy the book.

Fathers

• At age 12, young people’s author Peg Kehret got polio, and when she started to recover from the paralysis, part of her therapy involved learning to play the accordion because playing it exercises arm muscles that she needed to exercise. Peg’s father was enthusiastic about her learning to play the accordion, although she wasn’t. Because her father told her that she would learn quickly to play the accordion, she told him, “Why don’t you play it, if you think it’s so easy?” Her father replied, “All right. I will.” He borrowed the accordion, but unfortunately he could only make a few squeaks and squawks with it, along with just a few notes that sounded like “The Beer Barrel Polka.” Peg and her roommates, all of whom also had polio, booed and covered their ears. However, her father promised to try to play the accordion the following week, when he would visit her again. This time, although Peg and her roommates were prepared to boo and cover their ears, her father flawlessly played “The Beer Barrel Polka.” Of course, he had rented an accordion from a music store and played it until midnight each night to learn to play flawlessly that one song for his daughter.

• While author Robert Parsons was on holiday in St. Lucia, an island in the Caribbean, he and his family ate dinner at a buffet restaurant. Unfortunately, three English teenagers were seated nearby, and they were using the f-word. Because Mr. Parsons’ daughter was young enough to be reading books such as My Little Pony, he went over to the teenagers and told them to stop using foul language. They stopped. Unfortunately, Mr. Parsons’ wife told him later that the teenagers’ language had been foul, but his language when telling them to shut up had been fouler. Of course, telling three teenagers who could easily beat him up to shut up may be dangerous, but Mr. Parsons says that he has done something even more dangerous: taking drugs with the Clash and the Sex Pistols. By the way, Mr. Parsons is learning Japanese, a language that his wife and his daughter know well. As of early 2008, he had learned enough Japanese that his young daughter no longer laughed at him, and he says that he is able to read Tokyo street signs — “as long as they say ‘sushi.’”

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Education

Education

• Books can be a major source of information. This includes children’s books that are read primarily for pleasure. For example, Ann M. Martin wrote a Baby-Sitters Club book titled The Truth About Stacey, for which she did much research about juvenile diabetes. One young reader discovered that her symptoms matched those of Stacey, so she was tested and discovered that she had juvenile diabetes. Now that she knows she has the disease, she can take steps to manage it. Other young readers with juvenile diabetes have written Ms. Martin to say that they use The Truth About Stacey to teach their friends about the disease.

• While E.B. White was attending Cornell, he took a composition course from William Strunk Jr., who wrote a short book that gave rules for writing. One of the rules was “Omit needless words.” This is a rule that Professor Strunk followed so rigorously that he sometimes seemed to have “shortchanged himself,” according to Mr. White; however, Professor Strunk solved the problem by saying everything three times. Therefore, when he lectured on brevity, he would tell his class, “Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”

• When children’s book author Barbara Park — creator of Junie B. Jones — was in high school, her mother worked as a secretary in Barbara’s high school library. This worked in Barbara’s favor one day when she realized that she had forgotten to read a book she had to write a report about. Barbara went to the high school librarian and asked for help. Since the librarian knew both Barbara and Barbara’s mother, the librarian gave Barbara enough information about the book that Barbara was able to write a book report that got a passing grade.

• While attending Vassar, Edna St. Vincent Millay occasionally got into trouble and was called into the office of Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken, who disliked these “talks” because Ms. Millay would often get angry and frustrated, cry, then run out of the room. On one memorable visit to the President’s office, Ms. Millay cried so hard and so long that she borrowed two handkerchiefs from Mr. MacCracken, returning them later to his wife with a note saying, “Tell him that I washed and ironed them myself.”

• Robrt L. Pela (yes, that is how he spells his first name) was a little weird when he was growing up. In 1972, Mrs. Newville, his 6^th-grade writing teacher, read his composition book and wrote in it, “I’m sure you know there are certain subjects that are inappropriate to write about.” Mr. Pela writes that he cherishes that note. Mr. Pela grew up gay and wrote such books as Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters. Mr. Waters, aka the Prince of Puke, is the movie director of such cult gross-outs as Pink Flamingos.

• Some students are manipulative. For example, a student may cry instead of producing the work that is due. Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, has been a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. Ms. Greer says that this was her standard response to these manipulative, crying students: “Don’t you dare cry. I’m the one who should be crying. It’s my time and effort that’s being wasted.”

• When young people’s author Beverly Cleary was a child, she entered a contest in which the best essay about an animal would win $2. She won the $2, and she found out that she had been the only person to write and send in an essay. Ms. Cleary says, “This incident was one of the most valuable lessons in writing I ever learned. Try! Others will talk about writing but may never get around to trying.”

• In the 18^th century, Richard Porson was Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University. During a discussion of Greek poetry with Greek historian John Gillies, Dr. Gillies said, “We know nothing of the Greek metres.” Dr. Porson replied, “If, Doctor, you will put your observation in the singular number, I believe it will be very accurate.

• While at Trinity College, Dublin, Oscar Wilde read a poem, causing the class bully to sneer. This made Mr. Wilde angry, so he asked the bully to explain himself. Once again, the bully sneered. To settle the dispute, the two decided to fight. No one gave Wilde, who avoided competitive sports, a chance, but he soundly beat up the bully.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Education

Education

• Laura Numeroff got her start writing and illustrating children’s books when she took a course called, of course, “Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books.” Children’s book writer and illustrator Barbara Bottner, who praised Laura’s first effort at writing and illustrating a children’s book, taught the course at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Laura was so excited by the praise that she tried to get the book, Amy for Short, published. She says, “After four rejections, a big publisher bought my homework.” Her most famous book is probably If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and she thought up the idea for the book on a long and boring car trip. She told her companion, “What if you gave a mouse a cookie?” She then added, “He’d probably want some milk to go with it.” She says, “I ended up telling the entire story from beginning to end. It’s the first time that ever happened, and it hasn’t happened since.”

• Basketball player Bill Bradley had a good senior year at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game and leading his team to the semifinals of the NCAA Championship Tournament. Princeton lost the semifinal game to Michigan, but in the consolation game, it earned third place in the tournament, with Mr. Bradley scoring a remarkable 58 points. Afterward, he was named to many All-America teams and could have made many publicity appearances, but he disappeared from public view for a while. Why? He was at a friend’s house writing his senior thesis — a 150-page paper on the 1940 U.S. Senatorial Campaign in Missouri, an election that was won by future President Harry S. Truman. By the way, Mr. Bradley — a Rhodes Scholar — wrote his autobiography, Life on the Run, himself instead of enlisting the services of a ghost writer.

• When Marshall McLuhan started teaching at the University of Toronto in Canada, some professors were opposed to him, including ASP Woodhouse, a Milton scholar, who said, “This is not the sort of person we want at this university.” Taking a graduate seminar taught by Professor McLuhan was Lennie Anderson, a man of great intelligence. Professor McLuhan gave him a B, a grade that Mr. Anderson protested in a letter. Professor McLuhan responded, “Oh, you were definitely the best. But an A from me in this university could mark you unfit. Keep your head down, assemble your credentials, get tenure. Then you can tell them all to go to hell.”

• Do great writers make great teachers? Not necessarily. Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, taught briefly at Law Hill School in Halifax, England. She preferred the school dog to any of her pupils — a fact that she told her students. Anne Brontë, author of Agnes Grey, got a job with the Ingham family as a governess, a position that requires teaching. The two Ingham children were so unruly that she ended up tying them to a table leg — something that Mrs. Ingham discovered when she checked up on her children. Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, also got jobs as a governess. The adjectives she used to describe the children she taught in her job included “riotous, perverse, and unmanageable.”

• During Mary Beard’s first year studying classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, a male friend saw one of her essays that had been marked by a tutor, who had written, “This is very good; I think it would get a first.” The male friend was shocked and said, “You! Get a first!” Of course, a first is a top honor in Britain, and at the time — the mid-1970s — lots of men thought that women were incapable of getting firsts, especially in a male-dominated field such as classics. She says, “From that moment, I was bloody determined to show them.” And she did show them, becoming a Cambridge professor and the author of many well-read books on the ancient world.

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The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3 — Buy

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The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3— Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF