Category Archives: short story

Quotes for Nasty Women and Catholic School Daze

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th  Growing up in Catholic school with nuns as the arbiters of comportment left little room for deviant behavior that would go unpunished, unless you didn’t get caught.  The nuns discouraged “nasty” girls who where outspoken, yet ironically cited historical women who had achieved some fame as role models – Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others.  Linda Picone notes the modern version of compelling women in her collection referencing lines by women who dared to speak their minds in Quotes for Nasty Women.  

This short book has over three hundred pages of one liners from women novelists, politicians, actors, entrepreneurs, and other women of influence.  Just for fun, I picked out six quotes by an assortment of famous “nasty women”  who are among my favorites – both the women and the quotes.  Can you guess who said which?

The women who said the lines below are:    irreverent  New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, my favorite chef Julia Child, ubiquitous poet Emily Dickinson, the long-lasting influential Queen Victoria, American singer Joan Baez, and the witty American writer Dorothy Parker.  The answers are at the bottom of the post.

Quotes:

  1. “The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.”
  2. ” I dwell in possibility.”
  3. “I’ve never had a humble opinion.  If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?”
  4. “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
  5. “Drama is very important in life: You have to come in with a bang.  You never want to go out with a whimper.”
  6. “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.”

Perhaps the strongest influences in my life were the nuns, and Thea Marshall brought back that memory in her short story “Catholic School Daze” in the book Tuesdays at Two, a compilation of short writings by a local writer’s group.  Little girls, thankfully, often grow up to be “nasty women.”

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Answers to the list of quotes:

  1. Queen Victoria
  2. Emily Dickinson
  3. Joan Baez
  4. Dorothy Parker
  5. Julia Child
  6. Maureen Dowd

 

 

Smile – It’s Christmas

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My favorite irreverent poem for Christmas Eve is Shel Silverstein’s Christmas Dog. Read it again – here.

Looking for inspiration, I found another short popular poem by Silverstein:

Unknown“i made myself a snowball
As perfect as can be.
I thought I’d keep it as a pet,
And let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas
And a pillow for it’s head.
Then last night it ran away,
But first – It wet the bed.”

And…another poem from a favorite author, Phyllis McGinley:

Office Party

This holy night in open forum
     Miss Mcintosh, who handles Files,
Has lost one shoe and her decorum.
     Stately, the frozen chairman smiles

On Media, desperately vocal.
     Credit, though they have lost their hopes
Of edging toward an early Local,
     Finger their bonus envelopes.

The glassy boys, the bursting girls
    Of Copy, start a Conga clatter
To a swung carol.  Limply curls
     The final sandwich on the platter

Till hark!  a herald Messenger
     (Room 414) lifts loudly up
His quavering tenor.  Salesmen stir
     Libation for his Lily cup.

“Noel,” he pipes, “Noel, Noel.”
     Some wag beats tempo with a ruler.
And the plump blonde from Personnel
     Collapses by the water cooler. 

And, finally,  a lovely one to dream on by Walter de la Mare:

UnknownMistletoe

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

Unknown

 

Three Books Published Today

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Not in my library yet but I’ve downloaded the samples on my iPhone, trying to decide which to read first.  They all look good.

  41nPeHMQ9NL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Since hearing Ann Patchett praise her preview copy this summer, I’ve been waiting for this book of short stories by the famous actor.  According to Ann, he can write too.

 

SevenDaysblog-196x300Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

If a family reunion during the holidays has you apprehensive, the premise of this story may help prepare you.  After returning from disease infested Liberia, Olivia returns to England but must be in quarantine for seven days. This family has never spent that much time in each other’s company and it promises to be quite a Christmas.

 

LastMrsParrish-blog-196x300The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

Psychological suspense with shades of The Talented Mr. Ripley – noone is who you think they are – sounds deliciously thrilling.

 

 

 

 

 

100 Years Is A Long Time to Last

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December has the centenary anniversary of two of my favorite authors – Shirley Jackson and Penelope Fitzgerald.  Have you read The Lottery or The Blue Flower? If you have not, consider celebrating with a few of these authors’ good stories.

unknown-1A few years back I was so excited to hear a local book club had invited the author of The Lottery to speak; imagine how disappointed I was to discover it was a local author with a fictionalized memoir of buying a winning ticket in the sweepstakes.  Sadly, many in the audience had not read or heard of the famous author of horror and fantasy, Shirley Jackson.  When I read Jackson’s short story The Lottery as a young girl, her eerie Gothic world fascinated me, and I soon went on to read The Haunting of Hill House.  Her practice of writing one thousand words a day – more ambitious than Virginia Woolf’s goal of two hundred fifty – cemented her place in my list of writers to model.  December 14 is her 100th birthday.

unknown-2 Discovering Penelope Fitzgerald’s short novels accidentally opened a quiet escape for me.  I have her Man Booker Prize winning novel, Offshore, on my to-read list, but my two favorites of her writing are The Blue Flower and The Bookshop.  In her obituary for The Guardian, Harriet  Harvey-Wood wrote of her: “Throughout Fitzgerald’s novels, there are certain recurring themes, the most striking of which is the single-minded and blinkered innocent (usually male), whose tunnel vision causes disaster to those around. There is an example in almost every book, the most satisfying perhaps being Fritz von Hardenberg, Novalis in The Blue Flower.”  Perhaps because she found her voice later in life (writing The Blue Flower when she was 78), Fitzgerald represents an author to emulate. December 17 is her 100th birthday.

Addendum:

22trevor-obit-blog427 Today, a friend told me William Trevor died, and I looked for his obituary in the New York Times.  Although his birthday is in May, he deserves recognition.  I discovered Trevor when I read he was a favorite author of the revered British actress Maggie Smith, and I enjoyed his lyrical Irish flavor in The Story of Lucy Gault.  Have you read it?

 

Time to Read Americanah

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an award winning novelist and short story writer, produced a short story for the Book Review of the New York Times – The Arrangements.    The title had me  wondering if the story would mimic Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements, set in Nantucket, but the political cartoon on the page promised something better.  No matter what your politics, this “Work of Fiction,” will have you wondering and laughing.

9780307455925_p0_v2_s192x300     I have not yet read Americanah, Adichie’s acclaimed story of a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the United States for a university education and stays for work.  I now have it on order at the library.

Have you read it?