Word: anthologist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bryant argues that we have long since passed the golden age of conundrums, when there were riddling magazines and contests that intrigued kings and poets. Today such puzzles are usually confined to children's books and Sunday supplements, a situation that leads the disgruntled anthologist to pose a question of his own: "Is riddling something only relevant to cultures at the so-called 'mythological' stage of thought or has all the fun gone out of the Western world?" Answer: No. For proof, see Riddles Ancient and Modern, an engaging festival of some 700 posers, ranging from Homer...
...review, from pachyderms ("I think they had no pattern/ When they cut out the elephant's skin;/ Some places it needs letting out,/ And others, taking in") to birds ("The song of canaries/ Never var ies,/ And when they're moulting/ They're pretty revolting"). Anthologist Prelutsky gives equal time to children's resentments and fears, but his best selections feed the youthful sense of wonder expressed by Emily Dickinson's argument for reading poetry aloud: "A word is dead/ When it is said,/ Some say./ I say it just/ Begins to live/ That...
Some authors inescapably suggest animals: Hemingway is a lion, Tolstoy a bear, Colette a cat. Anthologist Stephen Brook is a crow. For The Oxford Book of Dreams he has ranged over four millenniums and most of the dry surfaces of the globe in search of recorded visions. The result is a nest of glittering curiosities, some of rare value, others plucked from the dustbin of history, where they belonged. Moreover, although the collection offers hundreds of entries, it also has inexcusable gaps. The dreams of Pharaoh's servants are here, interpreted by Joseph, but they represent one-half...
...protagonists whose ordinary lives cloak sadomasochistic and pathological behavior. The Cheeverish approach of Yuko Tsushima, 36 (A Bed of Grass), examines the roots of family distress and false nostalgia. Taeko Tomioka, 47, is a poet turned novelist, celebrated for her unflinching analyses of social despair. For these women, says Anthologist Yukiko Tanaka, "writing is the antithesis of the selfless submission prescribed by Japanese culture. Women writers have needed great courage to surmount the many obstacles to their attempts at such self-assertion...