Writer, teacher and translator Irving Weiss passed away on June 13. We have Irving to thank for bringing the aphorisms of Malcolm de Chazal into English.
Malcolm de Chazal (Geary’s Guide, pp. 359–361) was an aphorist and painter from Mauritius. I discovered the 1979 Sun edition of Chazal’s aphori...
The Wit’s End World* Tour is winding down, but here’s a little visual retrospective of the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. My thanks to all the booksellers, bookshops, festivals, and organizers of these events—and especially to everyone who turned out to talk about wit.
(* By ‘World’, o...
Check out Wit’s End live at these summer (and early fall) book festivals…
Printers Row Lit Fest
June 8, 2019
Chicago, IL
Bookstock
July 26, 2019
Woodstock, VT
Chautauqua Institution
July 31, 2019
Chautauqua, NY
Decatur Book Festival
August 30-September 1, 2019
Decatur, GA
My new book—Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It—is out on Nov. 13.
The book, of course, makes the perfect holiday gift for that special (please select one)
A) wit
B) nitwit
C) dimwit
D) half-wit
in your life. You can pre-order at Amazon, B&N or Indiebound.
But Wit’s End live ...
Attending a reading by Terrance Hayes at the Harvard Book Store the other day, I happened to sit next to Simon Constam. We happened to get to talking, and we happened to discover that we both write and read aphorisms. As Simon said, “the odds are astronomical against two people interested in apho...