An Old Woman became almost totally blind from a disease of the eyes, and, after consulting a Doctor, made an agreement with him in the presence of witnesses that she should pay him a high fee if he cured her, while if he failed he was to receive nothing.
The Doctor accordingly prescribed a course of treatment, and every time he paid her a visit he took away with him some article out of the house, until at last, and the cure was complete, there was nothing left. When the Old Woman saw that the house was empty she refused to pay him his fee; and, after repeated refusals on her part, he sued her before the magistrates for payment of her debt.
On being brought into court she was ready with her defense. “The claimant,” said she, “has stated the facts about our agreement correctly. I undertook to pay him a fee if he cured me, and he, on his part, promised to charge nothing if he failed. Now, he says I am cured; but I say that I am blinder than ever, and I can prove what I say. When my eyes were bad I could at any rate see well enough to be aware that my house contained a certain amount of furniture and other things; but now, when according to him I am cured, I am entirely unable to see anything there at all.”
(From a facsimile of the 1912 edition, Avenel Books, New York)
Not the 50 books you must read before you die
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8408894/Not-the-50-books-you-must-read-before-you-die.html
Call me hypersensitive about literature, K, but I just don’t find that sort of snarky humor amusing, particularly in a time when less than 30 percent of Americans engage in reading as entertainment.
It’s good to see you, however, you’ve been quiet for a long time. Hope all is well with you and the hubby.
So – sometimes the emperor is wearing clothes?
Okay, you’re hypersensitive. Look at it this way: The 70+ percent of Americans whom you think aren’t reading for entertainment aren’t going to bother with this Brit’s article anyway. For the rest of us, well, I’d imagine everybody has at least one gored ox on the list.
Life is hard enough for all of us these days, and it ain’t going to get any better. Don’t take something like this article so seriously. It’s not a reflection on you. Even English lit teachers got a chuckle or two reading this.
“Sweden’s most overrated export since Ikea” is dead-on re Stieg Larsson.
Maybe so but his snark about the “millions of people who pretend to love” Gatsby reeks of immature post-adolescent petulance from one forced by curriculum to explore a book that he couldn’t relate to (the book is ranked second in the Modern Library’s list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century).
And, despite the author’s ridiculous comments to the contrary, there’s only one extramarital affair going on in the plot of Gatsby, between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson (the garage owner’s wife). If you want to poke wise and snarky about lit, at least pretend you have read the book you are so blithely dismissing. As some regular readers may recall, I had a similar issue with “Fight Club” novelist Chuck Palahniuk over his ill-informed remarks about Nathanael West’s “Day of the Locust”, which I chronicled at Pop Matters in May of 2010:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/125348-chuck-palahniuk-just-shut-up/