Huck Finn

[Spektator]

Oh which reminds me that her class also did Great Expectations. WE used an audio channel on youtube for her to read along with for that one. Dickens is so very wordy. (pay by the word more accurately).

No. Dickens's contracts never mention a per word rate. Except in rare instances (A Christmas Carol for one), his books were first published as monthly or weekly serials, and when the run ended, immediately reprinted as books. The contracts specify the number of serial installments to be written (twenty weekly parts for Hard Times), but that was flexible, and he was never paid by by the word.

 

[Ron Swanson]

Any person should be "allowed" to read what ever they CAN read, They do anyway on the internet.

 

[dudalb]

No. Dickens's contracts never mention a per word rate. Except in rare instances (A Christmas Carol for one), his books were first published as monthly or weekly serials, and when the run ended, immediately reprinted as books. The contracts specify the number of serial installments to be written (twenty weekly parts for Hard Times), but that was flexible, and he was never paid by by the word.

I am so tired of the "Paid by the word" malarky about Victorian writers.
It is simply a case of that was the way people wrote back then. You see private letters; it was simply an more ornate style is how people wrote.
As the saying goes; "The Past is like a foreign Country:They do things differently there".

 

[arthwollipot]

"Paid by the word" is more descriptive of early 20th Century American pulp writers.

 

[novaphile]

"Paid by the word" is more descriptive of early 20th Century American pulp writers.

Something Isaac Asimov talks about a bit in his anthologies.

He mentions his delight when he placed an article with a publication that paid one cent per word rather than the quarter cent he was used to.

(Sorry I can't remember the specifics, but he talks about this stuff in the introductions to short stories in his anthologies.)

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Any person should be "allowed" to read what ever they CAN read, They do anyway on the internet.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[dudalb]

Any person should be "allowed" to read what ever they CAN read, They do anyway on the internet.

Exactly. I am very concerned that on both the left and right, you have the hard line ideologues arguing as to why we need to restrict free speech "for the good of society".
My only answer that is: the hell with the good of scoiety. THat has been used as the justification for every tyranny in the 20th century.

 

[ahhell]

Any person should be "allowed" to read what ever they CAN read, They do anyway on the internet.

I couldn't agree more.

Exactly. I am very concerned that on both the left and right, you have the hard line ideologues arguing as to why we need to restrict free speech "for the good of society".
My only answer that is: the hell with the good of scoiety. THat has been used as the justification for every tyranny in the 20th century.

This makes me think that none of you have met children.

 

[Spektator]

Possibly off-topic, but a former teaching colleague at our college used to tell us about her debut as an American Literature teacher. First day, she told the class "This is the second in a series of three American Literature courses. In my class, we will begin by reading a novel by Mark Twain. Years later, Ernest Hemingway said about that novel, 'all American literature comes from that one book, Huckleberry Finn.'"

Unfortunately, she was nervous and in the last two words she committed what she said "was possibly the worst Spoonerism of my life." When the class couldn't stop laughing, she dismissed them and said, "On Wednesday we will get started. Read the first ten chapters of . . . Mr. Twain's book."