Yes, everything is simple. It's people who complicate things.
Albert Camus
”I don’t think there is any truth. There are only points of view.”
Allen Ginsberg
"Borrowed" this from Dead Comedians' Society on Facebook.
Those who have not been exposed to the caustic humor of Ambrose Bierce have truly missed out on something unique. Known in his own time as "Bitter Bierce", he was one of the only great writers to emerge from the American Civil War. The only other I can think of off hand is Lew Wallace, who wrote "Ben Hur", but Bierce's work was of a very different sort from Wallace's. I suppose one might also count Mark Twain, but Twain's experience of that conflict was, at the most, peripheral. Bierce, in contrast with Twain, was in it up to the neck. Enlisting as a private, Bierce experienced combat at numerous battles, including Shiloh, eventually rising to the rank of Major and serving as a staff officer in a Brigade. His commanding officer recommended him for West Point, but that plan came to nought after Bierce was shot in the head at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, an event which, as Bierce doubtless would have put it, "made a great impression upon on his mind". After the war Bierce moved to San Francisco where he established a career as a journalist and writer noted for his particularly dark and cynical sense of humor. Even today some of his work undoubtedly still would shock many readers. However, perhaps the principal reason Bierce is not as well remembered today as he might otherwise have been is that he never wrote any novels; all his work being in the form of newspaper articles, short stories, poems or his hilariously-cynical "Devil's Dictionary", in which he defined the novel as "a short story, padded". After a long and celebrated career Bierce became so disenchanted with the state of the world that in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of WW-I, he re-visited many of the battlefields he had experienced during the Civil War and then vanished into war-torn revolutionary Mexico, never to be seen or heard from again.
When informed that in the eye of the law he is more blameworthy for his wife’s theft than she is, due to the fact that the law supposes a wife acts under her husband’s direction, he responds:
“If the law supposes that … the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” — Claude Monet
“The terror is in viewing the human face and then hearing it talk and watching the creature move.” ~ Charles Bukowski
There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.-- Mark Twain .
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
Clarence Darrow
"Nobody who lived through the '50s thought the '60s could've existed. So there's always hope.
Tuli Kupferberg
Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals establish a bank.
Bertolt Brecht
Absolute dominion of a powerful people by a minority always produces national aggression.
Philip Wylie
“the flies walk up and down the windows and we drink our coffee and pretend not to look at each other.”
~ Charles Bukowski
The title "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941) is derived from lines from two earlier W.C. Fields films. In "Poppy" (1936), he tells his daughter "If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break!" In "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" (1939), he tells a customer that his grandfather's last words, "just before they sprung the trap," were "You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."
Fields wanted to call the film "The Great Man." When Universal executives insisted on the eventual title, he said, "What does it matter, they'll never get that on a marquee. It'll probably boil down to 'W.C. Fields - Sucker.'"
Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" was the result. The studio paid Fields $25,000 for the story (written under the pseudonym Otis Criblecoblis) and $125,000 for his performance.
According to Fields' 2003 biography, the vehicle crashing into the drugstore was a real accident that occurred during filming. The director decided to leave it in to give the film the appearance of having a bigger budget.
When a rewritten script was submitted to Joseph Breen, the head of the MPPDA censor board, he exploded with a torrent of outrage and demanded changes. Breen took particular offense to the "vulgar and suggestive scenes and dialogue" and "jocular references to drinking and liquor." After Universal's rewrite, Fields commented, "They produced the worst script I ever read. I was going to throw it in their faces when the director (Edward F. Cline) told me not to. He said, 'We'll shoot your own script. They won't know the difference.' We did - and they didn't."
Well, they MOSTLY did. In the soda-shop scene, Fields turns to the camera and announces that the scene was supposed to have been filmed in a saloon "but the censor cut it out." He was telling the truth.
I am so tired of waiting
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind.
~ Langston Hughes
“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”
~Mark Twain, “Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings”
@edgarblythe,
There's a new book out, James, by Percival Everett, retelling Huckleberry Finn from the escaped slave's point of view.
@izzythepush,
Thanks. I had noticed somewhere there was such a book. Didn't know it was told from Jim's POV. Jim was smart but I don't recall that he was well educated. I need to read this one.
@edgarblythe,
I only know because the writer was being interviewed on Radio 4 this morning.
He said the main thing that prompted him was that it hadn't been done and he thought it must have been.
He said one thing he wanted to show was that when the Black people spoke to one another they were highly articulate, but when White people could overhear themthey would dumb down their conversation considerately.
@edgarblythe,
I get synchronicity a lot.
The other day I was driving back from my dad's house with a friend. He was talking of a lady friend of his. She is from Poland so he refers to her as Polecat.
Five minutes later a real polecat crossed the road in front of us, and it's the first time I've seen one in the wild.
