The Portable Curmudgeon

An entertaining collection of quotations, anecdotes, and interviews from the likes of H.L. Mencken, W.C. Fields, Dorothy Parker, and others, arranged alphabetically by subject. No scholarly paraphernalia. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

When turning the other cheek just won't do, try fighting back with the cantankerous remarks of some of the crustiest, grouchiest, and cleverest curmudgeons of all time. Profiles of three world-class wordsmiths--Alexander Woollcott, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Benchley--plus interviews with a variety of caustic commentators make this a collection of barbed remarks second to none.

In Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestselling The Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and the Muse. Here, too, are the secrets behind the sleight-of-hand practiced by artists from Aristotle to Rita Mae Brown. Sagacious, inspiring, and entertaining, Advice to Writers is an essential volume for the writer in every reader.

From the author of The Portable Curmudgeon, a delicious, witty, irreverent A to Z guide to the tics, twitches and safety-valves that characterize our twisted, neurotic modern world. We live in an Age of Anxiety. The events of modern life have overwhelmed the average homo sapiens until getting from Point A to Point B without being overcome by neuroses is a practical impossibility. Enter: the comic safety valve. Jon Winokur's Encyclopedia Neurotica is a delightful garden of the ills that beset modern man. Entries include excerpts from both popular and arcane published works, as well as original definitions, essential terms and the occasional cutting-edge concept, such as "celebriphilia, the pathological desire to sleep with a celebrity, suffered chiefly by groupies." Some samples from Encyclopedia Neurotica: --Abyss, the: the yawning unfathomable chasm of existential terror --Acquired Situational Narcissism: a condition characterized by grandiosity, lack of empathy, rage, isolation and substance abuse; mainly afflicts celebrities, who tend to be surrounded by enablers --Denial: unconscious defense mechanism that numbs anxiety by refusing to acknowledge unpleasant realities --Manic Run: prolonged state of optimism, excitement and hyperactivity experienced as part of bipolar disorder

The revered actor and quintessential self-made man recalls "trying to decipher" William Wyler with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, breaking Doris Day's ribs, having a "heart-to-heart and eyeball-to-eyeball" with Steve McQueen, being "a card-carrying liberal--and proud of it," and much more.

This book is the ultimate collection of Macintosh Conventional--and unconventional--Wisdom. A collection of Macintosh definitions and rules of thumb--humorous one-liners inspired by Ambrose Bierce. Includes reprints of Kawasaki's Mac'ser columns. (Hayden)