Download or read book Wit written by Margaret Edson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award. Adapted to an Emmy Award-winning television movie, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson. Margaret Edson's powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence's unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships. What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, "The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It's about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It's about compassion, but it shows insensitivity." In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end? The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson's writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
Download or read book Wit s End What Wit Is How It Works and Why We Need It written by James Geary and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End “convey[s] the power of wit to refresh the mind” (Henry Hitchings, Wall Street Journal). In “this inventive and playful book” (Tom Beer, Newsday), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter—from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue—Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.
Download or read book Elements of Wit written by Benjamin Errett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Got wit? We’ve all been in that situation where we need to say something clever, but innocuous; smart enough to show some intelligence, without showing off; something funny, but not a joke. What we need in that moment is wit—that sparkling combination of charm, humor, confidence, and most of all, the right words at the right time. Elements of Wit is an engaging book that brings together the greatest wits of our time, and previous ones from Oscar Wilde to Nora Ephron, Winston Churchill to Christopher Hitchens, Mae West to Louis CK, and many in between. With chapters covering the essential ingredients of wit, this primer sheds light on how anyone—introverts, extroverts, wallflowers, and bon vivants—can find the right zinger, quip, parry, or retort…or at least be a little bit more interesting.
Download or read book Who Ya Wit written by Brenda Hampton and published by Urban Soul. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full-figured diva Desa Rae Jenkins and her lover boy, Roc Dawson, have finally agreed to make their way down the aisle for better or worse, richer or poorer, and no mess whatsoever shall keep them apart. Several weeks before the long-awaited wedding, however, Desa Rae is confronted by a woman from the past who makes her aware of Roc's naughty nights in a place known as Hell House. The betrayal sends them back to what Desa Rae considers square one, but then the unthinkable happens. Roc discovers that she's been keeping some secrets too. During a prior visit to her son's college, Desa Rae and her ex-husband, Reggie, dared to go where they never thought they'd venture again. As a result, Roc is ready to put his foot where the sun doesn't shine. He doesn't believe that Desa Rae would do him like that. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Each one continues to make a case for why the other is guilty as charged. Black love is, once again, on the chopping block. Can love survive, or will Desa Rae and Roc come to a difficult decision to put their ongoing madness to rest and settle for being long-distance friends?
Download or read book Raymond Pettibon To Wit written by Raymond Pettibon and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2013, Raymond Pettibon took over one of David Zwirner’s gallery spaces in New York, transforming the high-ceilinged, garage-like white cube into his studio in order to prepare a show of drawings and collages within—and sometimes directly on—its walls. Titled To Wit, evoking the Middle English expression that has come to express a certain formality today and is defined as “namely,” or “that is to say,” the exhibition gave new meaning to the term “site specific,” featuring vibrant, gestural works Pettibon created in conversation with his surroundings that operated as a sort of archive, both product and record of his relationship to that space and time. Unified by their bold, vivid lines and unconventional framing, they feature allusions to a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from violence, humor, and sex to literature, youth, art history, and sports—embodying the artist’s signature mix of social and political commentary, diary entry, and automatic drawing. This publication, presenting large color plates of the works created over that summer by Pettibon, who also produced an original drawing for its sturdy cardboard cover, explores the intricate relationship between image and language that has long fascinated the artist. Just as the works in the exhibition existed at once as art and document, so too does the book itself have the hefty, physical presence of a work of art. Extensive installation views capture the dynamic combination of visual imagery and text that has come to characterize Pettibon’s practice, and a selection of gritty black-and-white photographs by Andreas Laszlo Konrath offers an intimate glimpse into the artist’s working process. Context is provided by Lucas Zwirner, who accompanied the artist throughout this period and contributed the book’s essay, “A Month with Raymond.” As Zwirner describes it, the show functioned “as an essayistic whole held together by imaginative leaps and subtle connections which Raymond has left unexplained and uninterpreted.” That perspective is rounded out in an interview with the artist by Kim Gordon, a visual artist and musician, who first encountered Pettibon’s work in the early 1980s in Los Angeles.
Download or read book Your Wit Is My Command written by Tony Veale and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny. Most robots and smart devices are not known for their joke-telling abilities. And yet, as computer scientist Tony Veale explains in Your Wit Is My Command, machines are not inherently unfunny; they are just programmed that way. By examining the mechanisms of humor and jokes--how jokes actually works--Veale shows that computers can be built with a sense of humor, capable not only of producing a joke but also of appreciating one. Along the way, he explores the humor-generating capacities of fictional robots ranging from B-9 in Lost in Space to TARS in Interstellar, maps out possible scenarios for developing witty robots, and investigates such aspects of humor as puns, sarcasm, and offensiveness. In order for robots to be funny, Veale explains, we need to analyze humor computationally. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Veale shows that joke generation is a knowledge-based process--a sense of humor is blend of wit and wisdom. He notes that existing technologies can detect sarcasm in conversation, and explains how some jokes can be pre-scripted while others are generated algorithmically--all while making the technical aspects of AI accessible for the general reader. Of course, there's no single algorithm or technology that we can plug in to make our virtual assistants or GPS voice navigation funny, but Veale provides a computational roadmap for how we might get there.
Download or read book Benjamin Franklin Wit and Wisdom written by Benjamin Franklin and published by Peter Pauper Press, Inc.. This book was released on 1998-03 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wit Will Walls written by Betty Kilby Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The historical figure is dynamic, passionate, and inspirational, she will take you on a wild roller coaster ride with her high-energy and exciting story. Betty was an infant plaintiff in the case of Betty Anny Kilby vs. Warren County Board of Education. She earned her AAS in Business Management; BS in Business Administration and an MBA with a concentration in Productivity Improvement in the Workplace, while working, going to school full time and raising four children. Betty started your career as a $2.10-per-hour-minimum-wage factory worker. She climbed the corporate ladder in two very different industries to upper-management positions."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Who You Wit written by Paula Chase and published by Paw Prints. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Mina Mooney betrays the clique's year-long virginity pact, she fears that her best friend Lizzie will never forgive her, while Kelly is only too happy to take things slow with Greg, and Jacinta has a pregnancy scare.
Download or read book Lit Wit Deck written by Richard Lederer and published by Potter Style. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think you're an avid reader, prepare to be stumped and stimulated Overflowing with fascinating trivia questions covering topics ranging from Shakespeare to Salinger, Gertude Stein to Frankenstein, The Scarlet Letter to The Scarlet Pimpernel, this deck is a riveting game to play with friends, family, and book club members--or you can even quiz yourself to brush up on your book smarts. Featuring Q & As, mix-and-matches, fill-in-the-blanks, and more, this deck guarantees hours of erudite fun
Download or read book Essay upon Wit written by Sir Richard Doddridge Blackmore and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle between the puritans and the sophisticates is never ending. At certain stages of cultural development the worldly wise are in the ascendent in the literary world, as they were in the Restoration and after the first World War. Yet those with a more sober view of life are never submerged, even when they are overshadowed. The court of the restored Charles gave full play to the indelicacy of Rochester, Dryden, and their circles, but most of their contemporaries were probably more content to read George Herbert, Queries, Baxter, and Bunyan. Though the fashionable and urbane remained dominant in letters through the age of Dryden, the forces of morality were rallying, and after 1688 the court (with which Blackmore was connected) threw its weight on the side of virtue. Jeremy Collier was but the most important voice of a great movement, destined to have its effect on literature. Sir Richard Blackmore contributed his share to the growing wave of bourgeois morality, which in the 18th century was reflected in the middle-class appeal of Addison and Steel, Lillo'sÊLondon Merchant, and Richardson's almost feminine plea for virtue rewarded. A physician, Blackmore had turned to poetry for relaxation and composed his soporific epics, by his own admission, in the coffee-houses and in his coach while visiting patients. In the preface, toÊPrince ArthurÊ(1695) the City Bard took occasion to flay the Wits of the day for their immorality, an attack which he followed up in 1697 with the Preface toÊKing Arthur, whose thinly disguised political allegory won him a knighthood. Up to this point the Wits had treated him with amused scorn, but when he called his big guns into action in theÊSatyr against WitÊ(dated 1700 but issued late in 1699) the Wits set out to crush him for once and all.Commendatory Verses on the of the Two Arthurs and the Satyr against WitÊ(1700), the reply, was far from commendatory. Edited by Tom Brown and sponsored by Christopher Codrington, this miscellany attempted in scurrilous and often bad verse to laugh the Knight out of literary existence. Its main distinction lies in the list of contributors, among whom were Sir Charles Sedley, Richard Steele, Tom Brown, and probably John Dennis. Blackmore's supporters answeredÊCommendatory VersesÊwithDiscommendatoryVerses on Those Which are Truly Commendatory, on the of the Two Arthurs, and the Satyr against Wit. (1700). It is not at all certain that Blackmore emerged second best in this exchange of blows in the miscellanies. At any rate, unabashed he went on to write more epics on Elizabeth, Alfred, Job, and to win himself a doubtful immortality by being pilloried in Pope'sÊDunciad.
Download or read book The Wit of Women written by Kate Sanborn and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The Wit of Women by Kate Sanborn
Download or read book A Discourse of Wit written by David Abercromby and published by . This book was released on 1685 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Considerations Upon Wit and Morals Transl from the French written by Gabriel Senac de Meilhan and published by . This book was released on 1788 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Countrey Wit A comedy etc written by Mr. Crown (John) and published by . This book was released on 1693 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Profane Wit written by James William Johnson and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the poet and libertine the Earl of Rochester. Of the glittering, licentious court around King Charles II, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was the most notorious. Simultaneously admired and vilified, he personified the rake-hell. Libertine, profane, promiscuous, heshocked his pious contemporaries with his doubts about religion and his blunt verses that dealt with sex or vicious satiric assaults on the high and mighty of the court. This account of Rochester and his times provides the facts behind his legendary reputation as a rake and his deathbed repentance. However, it also demonstrates that he was a loving if unfaithful husband, a devoted father, a loyal friend, a serious scholar, a social critic, and an aspiring patriot. An Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Rochester, James William Johnson is the author or editor of nine books and many articles treating British and American Literature.
Download or read book The Dramatick Works of Beaumont and Fletcher Coronation Sea voyage Coxcomb Wit at several weapons written by Francis Beaumont and published by . This book was released on 1778 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
