Sublime

“I’ve been grading my students’ lab reports both for their scientific merit,” Professor Potts said, “and for the language in which they tell me what they did, what their results were and how they interpret those results.

wrote about Scott, for example, but I gave him a cover name: Julian [in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”].

Some editors are put off by brilliant but idiosyncratic manuscripts and some, such as Perkins, are enticed by them.

RUTHLESS PEOPLE

‘Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.’

Then, Max wrote, S. S. Van Dine called “to give notice” that he would bring in his newest manuscript—

he had offended the daily critics in the book by referring to the New York crowd as “angleworms in a bottle” and to critics as the lice that crawl on literature;

Henry James

Overuse of metaphorical language will test a novel’s credibility.