The vintage connoisseur is not limited to the collection of old things. The true connoisseur will also collect the stories of old people. When I said I wasn’t sure about taking the time to go to a Friends of the Library book sale last weekend, my eighty-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Boaz, a dependable font of discriminating…
If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is this: the surest way to arouse and hold the reader’s attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers–Homer, Dante, Shakespeare–are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their…
Oliver Douglas: Mr. Haney, that pile of junk isn’t worth $8. Haney: To the unappraiseable eye, yes. I had each and every one of these objects de art evaluated by an in-unpeachable source: the county tax assessor, or as we sometimes call him, Cousin Joe. Before Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of American Pickers, there…
Yet the heterogeneous forces did cooperate to a reality which [we] could not deny… and the first number was representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. –William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) The Old Curiosity Blog is now OPEN.
The Old Curiosity Blog 