Word: hornbook
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...chronological span of Gorey's work runs from the hornbook-inspired Eclectic Abecedarium through the Jazz Age-naughtiness of The Curious Sofa but will budge no further. An enthusiasm for the obsolete furnishes his rooms with daguerreotypes, gramophones and bell-pulls, and his diction matches the furniture-- his characters say things like "Mercy!" and "Drat!." Gorey's nonsense verse is the direct descendant of Edward Lear's and Lewis Carroll's, and, as it would be impossible to transplant Lear or Carroll to another era, Gorey inherits their Victorian world along with their spirit...
Suddenly, here comes 4AD, their record label, under the aegis of big bad Elektra, with a two-CD compilation. It's being marketed as some kind of hornbook for those unbaptized in the waters of the Isla de Encanta, but this is hardly an effective form of proselytization. The first CD brings us seventeen "classic tracks from the band's five albums." What this really means is that it features the songs most often played on 120 Minutes, with no real regard to what's worth a good god damn. The first seven songs on this disc read like...
...madness, descent and purification that any American has written since Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Donald Newlove clearly set out to write a first novel about demoniac society. He has produced a combined morality play and grimoire, or devil's hornbook, in which every creature is experienced with hilarious or dreadful concreteness...
...politics do not seem like strangers to each other in Wheelwright's book, because its author had no doubt whatever that political freedom and verbal truth are the interrelated objectives of every wide-awake, decent man on earth. Political Self-Portrait is a kind of rebel's hornbook, full of references to the doctrines and deeds of those who Wheelwright felt have most signally helped-and hindered-truth-telling and liberty. On the angels' side, among others, are Prometheus, Jesus Christ, and the old Rev. John. On the other side may be found Cain, Stalin and Archibald...
American Wines & How to Make Them. A homebrew hornbook...