Synopses & Reviews
These cautionary notes and hilarious stories pack the Rosenblatt punch.
Anything Can Happen offers a class in "Tyranny for Beginners," warns about the snares and devices of dinner parties, explains the mind-set of barbarians, suggests the perfect gift for Mother--a wildebeest--and tells what happens when his dog's barking drives him to thoughts of murder.
Roger Rosenblatt forces us to laugh at the silliness of the world we have created, refocuses our minds on what really matters, and alerts us to the injustice and cruelty that lie just below the skin.
Review
"Sparkle and sting with Rosenblatt's trademark droll wit."
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"Sparkle and sting with Rosenblatt's trademark droll wit."(,Tulsa World,)
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"More scathing, and more offhandedly probing."
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"A literary gimlet two jiggers Oscar Wildean epigram, with a healthy splash of Woody Allen-like loopy pop culture references."
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"More scathing, and more offhandedly probing." (Publishers Weekly)
Review
PRAISE FOR
RULES FOR AGING"To read this book and drink a beverage at the same time is just plain foolish."--Garry Trudeau
"I like this book and am thinking it over. Especially rules 1, 3, 16--wish I'd known that about 15 years ago . . . And 34--'It's not about you'--that's worth the price of the book."--Garrison Keillor
PRAISE FOR WHERE WE STAND
"His essays are exactly what we need as a reminder of who we are, how we got that way, and how we will get through these new and difficult times."--Tom Brokaw
Review
PRAISE FOR ROGER ROSENBLATT AND ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN
“Roger Rosenblatt is one of our most gifted essayists—wise, witty, and insightful.”—TOM BROKAW
“With his clipped, clever drollery, his royal wryness,Roger Rosenblatt accentuates all of lifes dark imponderables with a wonderful tint of humorous resignation.”—FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Review
"Rosenblatt is bright, funny, and tells it like it is." St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Synopsis
The author of the deft Rules for Aging returns with thirty hilarious and engaging tales about the everyday human comedy, forcing the reader to laugh out loud at the silliness of the world.
Funny, ironic, and penetrating, Anything Can Happen is another rich and rewarding collection that demonstrates the agile wit that has endeared Roger Rosenblatt to readers everywhere.
About the Author
Winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize, a Peabody Award, an Emmy, and two Polk awards, Roger Rosenblatt is University Professor of Writing at Long Island University Southampton College. He writes essays for Time magazine and for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. He lives in Manhattan and Quogue, Long Island.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Take Two
My Bear
Lecture to One Suffering Yet Another Identity Crisis
On Aristocracy
What Bothers Me
Advice to Those About to Acquire a Rembrandt
Tyranny for Beginners
Don't Take Your Soul to New England
Stopping by Words on a Snowy Evening
On Your Conduct at the Dinner Party
My Stump Speech
On Class Distinctions
Shorter Than Bacon's
A Song for Jessica
New Year's at Luchow's
Yo, Weatherman
The Men's Room Wall: A Fantasy
Beautiful Houses
Lines Written Nowhere Near Tintern Abbey
Twenty Things One Would Like to See in Movies
Odes for a Rainy Afternoon
The Albatross That Brought Everyone Good Luck
Bring a Wildebeest Home to Mother
Jaws's Side of Things
Dogstoevsky
Love Song
Go Where You Are Loved
Essays. I, Too, Dislike Them
If in My Sleep
Instructions to the Housekeeper
"Neglect"
With Narcissus in the Aquarium
Kilroy Was Here
The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears
Teach the Free Man How to Praise
The Day I Turned into the Westin
Cliff's Other Notes
Environmentalists
Hearing Test
Everywhere a Hit Person
Lessons for Grades 1 to 6
If You Had Given It a Moment's Thought
The Bathroom for You
13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard
Something's Wrong
Shorter than Bacon's (More)
The Giant Rat of Sumatra
In the Madhouse in Beirut
Should Your Name Appear
Things I Can Take, Things I Can't
Relax
Cliff's Other Notes (More)
The Inventor of Time
Explanation to an Unprincipled Employer
Signs of Accomplishment as Depicted in the Rear Window of a Volvo
A Valediction for All Occasions
A Brief History of Idiocy
The Intervention of Facts
You Think I'm Kidding
Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos
How to Live in the World
Aubade
Instructions to the Pallbearers
On the Other Hand
The Grateful Living