Potboiler

Before his death in 2013, the Catholic priest Andrew Greeley wrote over 50 cheesy novels, netting him well north of $100 million.

His second best-seller in 1982 prompted Time's reviewer to skewer "Automatic Andy," who by admission wrote about 5,000 words―nearly one-tenth of a novel―every day.

"Everyone knows that a second novel is by definition worse than a first novel," the reviewer wrote.

"Since The Cardinal Sins was a cheap, tawdry, trashy, sleazy book, you can imagine how bad Andrew Greeley's new novel, Thy Brother's Wife, is. A putrid, puerile, prurient, pulpy potboiler."

A potboiler, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is "an artistic work, usually of low quality, that has been created quickly just to earn money."

To "boil the pot"―write trash―is an 18th century expression that leans on the image of the starving artist who stoops to "put food on the table."

But food wasn't the only thing pot-boiled in the 18th century.

In 1792, "Mad Anthony" Wayne, George Washington's zaniest general and a hero of the American Revolution, was sent by then-President Washington to Ohio to grab land from the Algonquins.

"Mad Anthony" Wayne

Mad Anthony did so with dispatch, but also managed to die of gout in the process.

To protect his body from marauders, his officers buried Mad Anthony in his uniform under a blockhouse on Lake Erie.

Thirteen years later, his son Isaac appeared in a small cart to claim his father's bones. He wished to rebury Mad Anthony in the graveyard of the family church near Philadelphia. 

Isaac hired a digger to exhume Mad Anthony's remains. But upon opening the coffin he found his father's rather rotund corpse intact, too large to transport in the cart. So Isaac hired Dr. James Wallace. 

Doctor Wallace butchered Mad Anthony and boiled the pieces in a pot. 

Isaac had the reduction, the uniform, and the surgeon's saws buried in the original grave, then packed the bones in a wooden box and took them home for interment.