I finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and smiled at your name in the ack-acks. Good book. I've got Riddley Walker on my shelf, but invented languages wear me out. Some day...
We have different obsessions about words and theater, but I'm so glad you write this substack and make me laugh. Happy November, Benjamin, if that's not an oxymoron.
I mean, it always sounded to me like “HIFF-ah-knee!” And that's as far as I could get.
And I think one just parks those things (or at least I did) in the I-don’t-know parking lot and leaves them there. If you never pause to think it through, you’ll never figure it out.
You wrote: ‘it starred the exceedingly pretty Farley Granger as Mr. Darcy and the sufficiently handsome Polly Bergen as Elizabeth Bennet’. My impression is that ‘pretty’ is more commonly applied to women and ‘handsome’ to men. A quick internet search shows that others have noticed this pattern too, although use of the words has varied in the past.
So I’m wondering if your word choice reflects societal changes in conventions that I am not aware of, a deliberate choice to be different or playful, a purposeful choice to imply specific meanings (that I am not fully getting), a random selection of words (unlikely for a writer like you), or some other reason.
I phrased it as I phrased it because it’s precisely what I meant, and if the phrasing has caused you to ponder its meaning at length, then I guess it was good and effective phrasing. Anything else I might say would diminish what I wrote and what you read.
On the topic of words that stay with you, I was mentally branded for life by Neal Stephenson's description of buildings in Oxford as a collection of "hederated gothics." That is a nice image, in the original sense of nice.
We love "mendacity." We use it often, mostly because it emanates from the mouth of the superbly gorgeous 1958 Paul Newman. On the subject of The Wizard, we love "As coroner, I must aver." But we also adore everything the Wizard says after being unmasked by Team Dorothy, particularly "Back where I come from, there are people who do nothing all day but good deeds. They're known as phil — phil-— phil — good deed doers." As children, we had to ask our English teacher dad what "phil-" was. Still and all, that entire script affords us numerous cheeky commenting opportunities in our modern times. Hooray for all those in the MGM colony as well as the brilliant folk in '40s and '50s Broadway, for all those excellent references.
Yes! "Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking" is something that we've invoked multiple times IRL... because sometimes we don't know what to say in times of trouble, but Classic Hollywood scripts put it best.
The second my partner and I saw that TCM was showing 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' again, we'd call out "mendacity!" A *glorious* word. And, a majority of cases, we could mumble it to each other in front of the person being mendacious and they wouldn't know what you were talking about. Similar to 'malarkey,' pre-Joe Biden.
I know exactly what you mean! Any number of my favorite words are favorites at least partly because of the whole background of associations they evoke for me. (And the coronor’s line is probably my favorite “Wizard” lyric outside of the Cowardly Lion’s “Courage” song!)
(I *want* to believe that I knew it was “minuscule”! I know I typed that word recently [using in a technical sense, describing later ancient Greek manuscripts written in lowercase letters, as opposed to older uncial or majuscule manuscripts written in capital letters]. But I checked the piece, and it looks like I wound up cutting that word, however I spelled it. I did discover that I spelled it wrong in a piece 15 years ago. So thank you for that!)
Though it took me a few decades to decipher Bert Lahr's too-too pronunciation of the word I thought was (like tinsel, I guess?) "tince." Oh, you mean CHINTZ.
Oh, I hope you had fun. I cherish her so much. I might not have ever been inspired to write Dreyer's English had I not gotten seriously back into the copyediting biz working with Liz on The Burgess Boys. A match, as it turned out, made in heaven.
I can't hear the word tantamount without hearing Christine Baranski saying "Tantamount! Tantamount!" in House of Blue Leaves.
That's a great one!
Ah, Uncle Bundel.
“You made me drop my grebe!”
It looks like gold chair to me.
I finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and smiled at your name in the ack-acks. Good book. I've got Riddley Walker on my shelf, but invented languages wear me out. Some day...
I’m due to reread R.W., but my recollection from decades ago is that one acclimates quite quickly.
K&C is indeed a good and fun book. I had such fun working on that.
I had to read certain passages out loud before I could make out their meanings. But the book does have a minor character named Belgrave Moters.
The writing on the floor says "gold chair".
We have different obsessions about words and theater, but I'm so glad you write this substack and make me laugh. Happy November, Benjamin, if that's not an oxymoron.
Glad you got around to the "If any!" addendum. Pleasant to exclaim (complete with upward gesticulation) when watching the movie.
I mean, it always sounded to me like “HIFF-ah-knee!” And that's as far as I could get.
And I think one just parks those things (or at least I did) in the I-don’t-know parking lot and leaves them there. If you never pause to think it through, you’ll never figure it out.
You wrote: ‘it starred the exceedingly pretty Farley Granger as Mr. Darcy and the sufficiently handsome Polly Bergen as Elizabeth Bennet’. My impression is that ‘pretty’ is more commonly applied to women and ‘handsome’ to men. A quick internet search shows that others have noticed this pattern too, although use of the words has varied in the past.
So I’m wondering if your word choice reflects societal changes in conventions that I am not aware of, a deliberate choice to be different or playful, a purposeful choice to imply specific meanings (that I am not fully getting), a random selection of words (unlikely for a writer like you), or some other reason.
I phrased it as I phrased it because it’s precisely what I meant, and if the phrasing has caused you to ponder its meaning at length, then I guess it was good and effective phrasing. Anything else I might say would diminish what I wrote and what you read.
Is that the same Russell Hoban who wrote the Frances books?
Yes, that's the fellow. He also wrote The Mouse and His Child. And a very beguiling book titled The Lion of Boaz-Jaquin and Jaquin-Boaz.
On the topic of words that stay with you, I was mentally branded for life by Neal Stephenson's description of buildings in Oxford as a collection of "hederated gothics." That is a nice image, in the original sense of nice.
I guess I was hoping that people would share their own exceptionally memorable words and phrases. Yours is *really* good.
American English is such a rich language—sure wish Americans would use it.
We love "mendacity." We use it often, mostly because it emanates from the mouth of the superbly gorgeous 1958 Paul Newman. On the subject of The Wizard, we love "As coroner, I must aver." But we also adore everything the Wizard says after being unmasked by Team Dorothy, particularly "Back where I come from, there are people who do nothing all day but good deeds. They're known as phil — phil-— phil — good deed doers." As children, we had to ask our English teacher dad what "phil-" was. Still and all, that entire script affords us numerous cheeky commenting opportunities in our modern times. Hooray for all those in the MGM colony as well as the brilliant folk in '40s and '50s Broadway, for all those excellent references.
The Oz script really is, line by line, joke by joke, wondrous.
Yes! "Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking" is something that we've invoked multiple times IRL... because sometimes we don't know what to say in times of trouble, but Classic Hollywood scripts put it best.
The second my partner and I saw that TCM was showing 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' again, we'd call out "mendacity!" A *glorious* word. And, a majority of cases, we could mumble it to each other in front of the person being mendacious and they wouldn't know what you were talking about. Similar to 'malarkey,' pre-Joe Biden.
I know exactly what you mean! Any number of my favorite words are favorites at least partly because of the whole background of associations they evoke for me. (And the coronor’s line is probably my favorite “Wizard” lyric outside of the Cowardly Lion’s “Courage” song!)
(I *want* to believe that I knew it was “minuscule”! I know I typed that word recently [using in a technical sense, describing later ancient Greek manuscripts written in lowercase letters, as opposed to older uncial or majuscule manuscripts written in capital letters]. But I checked the piece, and it looks like I wound up cutting that word, however I spelled it. I did discover that I spelled it wrong in a piece 15 years ago. So thank you for that!)
Though it took me a few decades to decipher Bert Lahr's too-too pronunciation of the word I thought was (like tinsel, I guess?) "tince." Oh, you mean CHINTZ.
Um, a propos of seeing the delightful Elizabeth Strout at a reading last night: I assume you are worthy of her adoration. I adore you both!
Oh, I hope you had fun. I cherish her so much. I might not have ever been inspired to write Dreyer's English had I not gotten seriously back into the copyediting biz working with Liz on The Burgess Boys. A match, as it turned out, made in heaven.
Footnote 1 deserves a place in the Footnote of the Month Club.
Perhaps I should go into the footnote mail order business, and send them out with pears and pineapples!
Harry and David and Benjamin
We might need to discuss the billing.