CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN by Rob Lopresti “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” —Mark Twain The photo above shows your humble scribe celebrating one of the perks of his status as a faculty member at a university, namely the privilege of helping our new graduates solemnize their achievement. […]
Faithful Criminal Brief readers have heard from Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all now revered as important figures in the development of the American short story. But there was a time when the short story was the Rodney Dangerfield of literature. The man who changed that was Professor James Brander Matthews (1852-1929) […]
BLITHERING IDIOMS by James Lincoln Warren Blithering – Senselessly discursive or talkative, babbling; esp. of a person, used chiefly as an intensive adjective, with the meaning ‘consummate’ (freq. in blithering idiot); also more widely = despicable, contemptible. Idiom – A form of expression, grammatical construction, phrase, etc., peculiar to a language; a peculiarity of phraseology […]