I'll take Potpourri for $500...
[a few miscellaneous things]
[originally published May 22, 2024]
Good morning, and happy Wednesday.
I’m facing down a deadline so don’t have the time for a deeply thought thinkpiece right this second—I trust you’ll forgive me—but I wanted to drop by and say hey and be informative in that way I like to think I have, so to pass the time here are a few assorted things, perhaps not my favorites (hello, sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles) but not, I trust, unfun.
Yesterday’s Wordle puzzle—particularly a particular1 word I knew better than to play, but now I wonder whether it might have gone through—reminded me of the time that I gently suggested to an author that “shiny” might be a better adjective for silk (or maybe it was hair) than “sheeny.” Bless them, they had no idea what I was talking about. Bless you twice over if you also have no idea what I’m talking about.
For the record, the winning Wordle word yesterday was “dingo,” and I do believe that quite a few of us played “jingo” or “dingy” before we got to it. But not, perhaps, that other word.2
“Omit needless words” is fine as far as it goes, but not every word needs to be valiantly needful, and a lot of sentences are better with a little fat or even gristle in them rather than cut to the bone.
Also, while we’re here: Please, copy editors, stop deleting every “that” in sight. A sentence beginning “John felt Mary” will surely benefit from an immediately following “that” if the rest of the sentence is “was in over her head” (rather than the depiction of an arrival at what we used to refer to as first base), and “Mary believed John” will also surely benefit from a “that” if the sentence in full is going to be “Mary believed that John was the biggest liar she’d ever met in her life.”
Insofar as the verb “to gaslight” is concerned, I would suggest “gaslighted” rather than “gaslit” for the past tense, as it better indicates that the verb derives from what Charles Boyer does to Ingrid Bergman in the 1944 MGM film Gaslight rather than the illumination of Victorian parlors, streets, and stage performers.
And a reminder that gaslighting is not simply lying. Gaslighting is (thank you, Merriam-Webster) “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”
Also noting that having purchased the rights to Patrick Hamilton’s stage play Gas Light, MGM did everything in its power to erase the very existence of the earlier, 1940 British film version of same starring Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard (how wonderful it might have been had George Cukor cast the divine Anton opposite the divine Ingrid rather than the rather obviously villainous Charles; Angela stays, of course), even unto destroying the negative and all extant prints, in an attempt to persuade moviegoers that they had never seen the earlier film and that it had never existed.
And in conclusion: The Jeopardy! categories are (were? I haven’t watched the show as much since Art Fleming retired in the late 1970s) Potpourri and Potent Potables, though Potent Potpourri might have been fun too.
OK, back to work for me. More later!
B
P.S. One thing I can and usually do (and happily) is answer quick questions, so if there’s anything relatively minute you need to know, the comments are good for that sort of thing. If I can’t answer your question quickly, I might well answer it at length in a later Substack party piece.
It’s a good thing for a writer to be aware of their own habits and decide whether those habits are style or tics. For instance, I’m extremely aware of my habit of writing things like “deeply thought thinkpiece” (as above) and “particularly a particular.” As of course I’m aware of my penchant for parentheticals (and alliteration) and footnotes. Do you look at your own writing that way? I know that it’s hard, sometimes, to see yourself, but it’s worth some effort.
You’re smart people. You’ll figure it out. And you know how to google.
And, now and then, an extra word adds a nice little rhythm to a sentence that is clear but nevertheless lacking.
My Wordle strategy is to use as many different letters in my early guesses as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that is the dominant strategy among all players. I haven't, however, developed a good strategy for words that use a letter twice (I'm glaring at you, HITCH).