Q: What do you get when you take an American expatriate living in Paris and cross him with a suicidal rodent?
A: Ernest Lemmingway

Q: What’s the difference between Bertrand Russell, Mary Shelley, and Alice B. Toklas?
A: One debated Wittgenstein, one created Frankenstein, and one a-bedded Gertrude Stein.

Woman #1: Why did Zelda Fitzgerald cross the road?
Woman #2: To “F” Scott Fitzgerald.
Woman #1: I wouldn’t “F” Scott Fitzgerald, but I Sherwood Anderson.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Erskine Caldwell.
Erskine Caldwell who?
Erskine called while you were in the bathroom, and you never called him back.

Faulkner? I barely know ‘er!

Invaders! The enemy is at the gates, and he looks just like us, but with better teeth. And really, we want to be his friend. And there are no gates. I’ve filed this piece under “Rants” and with good reason: I’m about to get right off my bike about British English’s gradual erosion and the slow, insidious advance of a simplified (dumbed down) form of American English.

But.