Customer Reviews

Women's Wicked Wit: From Jane Austen to Rosanne Barr

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book as a gift and have since purchased a copy for myself. The wit is superb. Fabulous!

A great little compendium filled with several centuries of saws, wit, adages and one-liners for those like myself "into comedy and wit." They are especially appropriate for those in search of the perfect "one liners" to add to a speech, or to keep an annoying acquaintance at bay, or as a "comeback" to sharp underhanded but oblique attacks.

It would be (reverse) sexist to say that women seem to have the sharpest tongues in the arsenal of the armory of the verbal arts, but if one judges by this book, it must be true. So I'll just be "politically incorrect" and "a (reverse) sexist," and say so: These adages and one liners, strung out across history, are not just funny, but they are, just as the book describes them, simply wicked, no! savage, devious, and pure evil. That is to say, delicious.

Five stars

Wicked wit is the Super-Addressee of modern culture or the discovery of cold fusion with creeping crud, whichever happens first. The literary life of women can furnish a psychotic multiplicity of nice bits of intellectual subjectivity. The index of Women's Wicked Wit (2000, 2002) by Michelle Lovric provides some pages for comments about Freud, including a reaction to his famous complaint:

It beats me how Freud could say
"What do women want?"
as if we must all want the same things.
(Katherine Whitehorn).

In addition to having some examples from Mae West, who delighted audiences by teasing men, Women's Wicked Wit has literary gems from Jane Austen, Colette, Ouida, Dorothy Parker and Virginia Woolf, backed by comments from stars like Madonna and the comments on culture produced by women who may have something in common with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is quoted saying:

I apparently remind some people
of their mother-in-law or their boss,
or something. (p. 231).

The book begins with a section Women on Women (pp. 1-4) which is much shorter than Women on Men (pp. 5-26). The idea of universal laws is probably left over from a time when women were not expected to say:

[Some guys] make love like they
were the only ones in the room,
which I think is a holdover from
when they were. (p. 21).
(Diane West).

Women now have the kind of social acceptance that Martin Luther thought justification by faith could produce when he translated the Bible into German. Martin Luther had been isolated with monks when his religious ideas diverged from the institutional thinking of organized religion. Hedda Hopper is quoted when she felt the same way about Hollywood:

Inasmuch as I left home to escape
the heritage of being the butcher's
daughter, it seems ironical that I
was to spend the rest of my life
in dealing in ham. (p. 142).

When looking for a quip to bring out at parties or the water cooler, a signature for your email, or just for general enjoyment- this book provides! I bought one as a gift, and then purchased a copy for myself. Love it!