What writer described his body of work as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries”?
Stephen King. Credit goes to Dana-Elayne.
Category: Trivia
Trivia #8
What Emma Lazarus sonnet appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty?
“The New Colossus.” Credit goes to Dana Elayne.
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Trivia #8
And on to another famous dramatist (and philosopher and novelist)…
What country lifted a ban on Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Dickens in 1978?
China. Credit goes to Kelly.
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Trivia #6
The answer to last week’s trivia question:
How much did Thoreau spend when he built his cabin near Walden Pond?
$28.12 1/2. What ever happened to the half-penny anyway?
No one gets credit, because I stumped you even though the answer would be really easy to find on Google should one be so inclined. You people are lazy. However, I send Jennifer credit for at least being interested in the answer.
So, this week’s question:
Which real-life writer was the inspiration for Alice Walker’s character Shug Avery in The Color Purple?
Answer: Zora Neale Hurston. Credit goes to Ms. Boombastic.
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Walden
I can’t remember if I mentioned here that I am accompanying the 10th graders on their class trip to Boston next month. I’m really looking forward to it, especially since I found out that Evan, the Experiential Educator in charge of class trips like this and Judaics instructor extraordinaire, arranged for us to visit Walden.
I am not sure when I first read Walden, but I know that it has been profoundly influential over my outlook in life. I can’t claim to have simplified much of anything, but I have lain in the grass and watched the ants — and I wrote a poem about it that I’ve lost over the years. I’ve found perfect oneness with God by the side of a small lake in the woods and in the music of a babbling creek on a mountaintop. I relate to Thoreau, and sometimes I’ve wished I could be a bit more like him.
I wonder what it will be like to actually walk in his footsteps.
Then again, it sounds like the highlight of the trip, at least for one of my students, will be seeing the Blue Man Group. Maybe, though… maybe they’ll get it. Maybe they’ll breathe it in the air and feel it through the soles of their feet.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.–from the “Conclusion” to Walden
Trivia #6: How much did Thoreau spend when he built his cabin near Walden Pond?
Answer: $28.12 1/2
Trivia #5
No one got last week’s question: Which poet did not speak for the last fourteen years of his life? It was Ezra Pound.
Good luck with this one, everybody:
Which contemporary novelist and poet lost visibility in her right eye when one of her brothers shot her with a BB-gun as a child?
Answer: Alice Walker. Credit goes to Dana-Elayne. C’mon, folks, you are giving the English teacher an unfair advantage. Use Google, for crying out loud! She was even on vacation, and you all still couldn’t beat her to the punch!
Oh Crap! Trivia #4
How could you guys let me forget that?
This week’s question:
Which poet did not speak for the last fourteen years of his life?
It was Ezra Pound. No one got credit, because I stumped you all this week. Ha!
On a completely unrelated note, Happy Birthday to Jimmy Page.
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New Year’s Resolution and Trivia #3
My friend Greg’s death has inspired me to do something I don’t do, and generally don’t believe in: make a New Year’s resolution. I am going to do whatever I can to touch base with old friends. I don’t want to feel, at the end of my life, that I didn’t do everything I could to try to maintain my friendships. Over the last several years especially, I have let my life concerns get in the way of being a proper friend. Then I looked around and discovered I didn’t really have any friends. Oh, you all who come by and read my blog are nice, and it isn’t that I don’t consider you friends. In fact, you’re my only friends, really. Frankly, I think it is sad that my only friends are people I’ve never actually met. You have to admit that is sort of sad. It isn’t that I don’t want to make new friends, but I haven’t been a good enough friend to the old ones… no wonder I looked around and was alone. I don’t want to be that way anymore. This blog is a great opportunity to communicate, and I want to use it. I want to say, when I comes time for me to die, that I was here, and I want my friends to remember me, too. And I can’t find any pithier way of saying it: life is too short to do otherwise than live it.
After September 11 happened, I remembered how awkward it was to go on with life. To laugh. Of course I am not saying that the death of a person I was friends with 7 years ago is comparable to that tragedy — or even the tragedy being played out as I write — at this writing, over 140,000 confirmed deaths are attributed to what has to be one of the worst natural disasters on record. Things like this, though — the death of a loved one or even an acquaintance, tragedy, reminders that we are mortal — all serve to make us feel, well, guilty. We live. And we’re probably not doing it up right, either. On the other hand, levity feels wrong. I will never forget that SNL skit Will Ferrell did maybe a month after 9/11. TV comedy seemed dead in light of the events in the news. How were we going to laugh again? Ferrell played a businessman who worked in an office that decided to slacken the dress code to enable workers to express their patriotism. And Ferrell wore a red, white, and blue thong to work. I laughed so hard. Every time I see it, I laugh again.
It’s Friday, and I have this newly established literary trivia thing — it’s actually fun for me. I wondered if I should post a trivia question here, right after a post about Greg’s death. Then it occurred to me. This is the sort of thing he would have enjoyed. So, to that end:
Which famous poet had a club foot?
Answer: George Gordon, Lord Byron. Credit goes to Dana-Elayne.
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Trivia #2
I know these are supposed to be on Fridays, like I said last time, but tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I’m going to Macon. Here is this week’s literary trivia. Kind of an easy one, I think:
To whom did Herman Melville dedicate his masterpiece of American Literature, Moby-Dick?
And the correct answer is Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the classic novel The Scarlet Letter. Credit goes to Dana Elayne.