paremiology cit & Fred's book in Harper's

[Shapiro, Fred]

Thanks for pointing this out, Amy.  From my standpoint, this tests the limits of the "any publicity is good publicity" philosophy, as the only mention of my book in the so-called "review" is a reference to "the recently published and ridiculous _Yale Book of Quotations_, which includes such gems as 'Free your mind and your ass will follow.'"  I guess I should be grateful the reviewer didn't go on at any greater length.  I knew from the start that the kind of book I was producing had a high risk of provoking some negative reviews by highbrow writers, but this is actually one of only a very few examples I have seen of that kind of reaction.  For the record, I am particularly proud of including George Clinton's "Free your mind and your ass will follow" in the book.

Fred Shapiro


________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Amy West [medievalist at W-STS.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 9:46 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: paremiology cit & Fred's book in Harper's

I don't think anyone's mentioned this so far, but my memory is
terrible, so I apologize if I'm repeating old news:

Fred's book got a *very* brief mention in a "review" in Harper's
January 2008 issue. It's in "Too True: The art of the aphorism" by
Arthur Krystal, pp. 83-89. Ostensibly it's a review of Fred's book
and 4 other aphorism/quote books. It's actually more of an essay on
aphorisms and commonplace books with only glancing mentions of these
books. It's *very light* on the evaluation purpose of a review.

But, there's also a cit for "paremiology" there:

p.86, footnote 3
"Today, some experts in the field of paremiology (the study of
proverbs, as if you didn't know) argue that common expressions were
largely dropped from polite speech in eighteenth-century England."

---Amy West

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