mystery quote: "Men like war...."

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Garson. Amazon will sell you a used one for a penny and a new one
for $115.64.

So it's in demand. Why not get both?

The date suggests that the quote is from either Ellmann's prize-winning
_Sweet Desserts_ (1988) or from the less sweet _Varying Degrees of
Hopelessness_ (1991).

Which can it be?

JL

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: mystery quote: "Men like war...."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jonathan Lighter wrote
> > 2,630 websites endorse the following words (more or less) by contemporary
> > novelist Lucy Ellmann (usually misspelled):
> >
> > "Men like war; they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for
> it
> > with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's
> blood."
>  ...
> > The earliest allusion I can find is from 2001.
>
> Google Books claims that a version of the quotation is in the
> following 1996 compendium:
>
> 365 Women's Reflections on Men by Catherine M. Edmonson
> http://books.google.com/books?id=w0pTnNwaheYC&q=menstruate#search_anchor
>
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