Word: baboons
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...Fine Art of Literary Mayhem, by Myrick Land. Carlyle was not feuding with Emerson when he called him "a hoary-headed and toothless baboon," but most of the other literary figures in this book are-and their pejorative language is choice...
...most but considerably tamer than some-as this lucid and witty guide to literary feuding demonstrates. The casual insult. Author Land points out, is not enough to constitute a feud. Carlyle, for instance, was not feuding with Emerson when he referred to him as "a hoary-headed and toothless baboon," or with Swinburne when he refused to meet him on the ground that he did not want to know a man who was "sitting in a sewer and adding to it." Nor was Truman Capote seriously feuding when he remarked of Jack Kerouac's work: "That...
Primates are social animals; they live in groups. The organization of these societies is complex, and poorly understood. One thing is certain, however--the society increases the survival chances of the individual. Cut off from his troop, the individual baboon will not last very long. It is easy to see why: physiologically, he is poorly equipped for solitary life in the African veldt. Compared to his greatest predator, the leopard, the baboon not very big, or very strong, or very fast. To exist, he has developed society--as an instrument of defense...
...doubt he formed societies for protection like the modern baboon. That is only part of the story, for baboons are herbivorous. Australopithecus was a flesh-eater, and he needed to kill in order to survive. But a four-foot, ninety pound ape-man is a poor match for a large animal--unless he is armed...
...sentence from one of Miller's most mailable literary essays is typical: "Joyce, the mad baboon, herein gives the works to the patient antlike industry of man which has accumulated about him like an iron ring of dead learning." In a collection of aphorisms, the reader learns that "in life's ledger, there is no such thing as frozen assets." If the sage of Big Sur were to be judged from this book alone, it would be hard to justify Editor Durrell's prophecy that Miller may one day be classed with Whitman and Blake...