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Bret Harte (Francis Brett Harte) 25.August 1839 Albany, New York - 6.Mai 1902 Camberely, England – Bret Harte

"Luck," continued the gambler reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you." The Outcasts of Poker Flat, 1869

William Dean Howells 1. März 1837 Martins Ferry, Ohio – 11. Mai 1920 New York

In der Kurzgeschichte "The Critical Bookstore" eröffnet Frederick Erlcourt einen Buchladen, in dem er von ihm selbst gelesene und für gut befundene Bücher verkauft. "Why don't you stock it?" they demanded. "Because I don't think it's worth reading." "Oh, indeed!" The sarcastic customers were commonly ladies. "I thought you let the public judge of that!" "There are bookstores where they do. This is a critical bookstore. I sell only the books that I think worth reading. If you had noticed my sign—" "Oh!" the customer would say, and she, too, would go away without buying. "The Critical Bookstore", Harper's Monthly Magazine 127.759 (1913). S. 437 Am Ende – wäre hätte es anders erwartet? – scheitert Frederick. [Frederick:] "... I have made a mistake. Literature is the whole world; it is the expression of the gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, and it is the pleasure of the gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, as well as the expression and the pleasure of the wise, the fine, the elect. Let the multitude have their truck, their rubbish, their rot; it may not be the truck, the rubbish, the rot that it would be to us, or may slowly and by natural selection become to certain of them. But let there be no artificial selection, no survival of the fittest my main force—the force of the spectator, who thinks he knows better than the creator of the ugly and the beautiful, the fair and foul, the evil and good." "The Critical Bookstore", Harper's Monthly Magazine 127.759 (1913). S. 442 Siehe weitere Zitate zur Literatur in der Literatur

   
© by Herbert Huber, Am Fröschlanger 15, 83512 Wasserburg, Germany, 11.2.2007