In Pursuit of Eschewing Surplusage

A co-worker recently directed me to Mark Twain's criticism of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales," a series about one ridiculous Natty Bumppo and quite a few historically inaccurate American Indians. I confess, I've never read much of Twain's work in general (aside from "Pudd'nhead Wilson," which I thoroughly enjoyed), so his criticism was a delightful surprise.

Twain's essay, titled "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," outlines a series of guidelines or prerequisites for "literary art in domain of romantic fiction" and one by one describes how Fenimore Cooper failed to even comprehend these guidelines.

I think what I love about Twain is his flexibility:
- He can be long-winded and blustery: "when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say" (paragraph 8)
- He can be incredibly to the point: "Eschew surplusage" (paragraph 18)
- He uses sarcasm and irony incredibly well: "I wish I may never know peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball across the plain in the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a daisy?" (paragraph 25)
- He is generally in complete earnest beneath all the language and humor he employs: "I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that "Deerslayer" is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that "Deerslayer" is just simply a literary delirium tremens." (paragraph 51)

The above are just samples of Twain's wit and devotion to beautiful literature. For the full piece, visit it at the University of Virginia Library: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses.

Words: A History Lesson

Today could not be any wetter if we dunked it in the ocean. Fortunately, I have a new and lovely pair of rainboots! They are navy and hot pink plaid on a cream background and solidly waterproof. They even have a cozy, hot pink fleece lining. I amused myself on the way to work thinking of other words for rainboots. Shall we?

Wellies: British, from Wellingtons or Wellington boots. Named after Arthur, First Duke of Wellington (1769-1852). He apparently was a dashing, well-dressed fellow who set many fashion trends, and thus had boots, trousers, coats, hats, and even a few trees named after him.

Rubbers: also British; relatively modern slang for rubber boots or rubber waders.

Mukluk: also "muckluck." Eskimo word for sealskin, describing the material of their traditional footwear: waterproof and often lined with fur.

Galoshes: Latin for "Gallic shoe." A wooden sole strapped to the foot with leather. However, there's an alternate (and more interesting) etymology: Greek from the word for "shoemaker's last;" the shoemaker had run out of expensive leather and resorted to the cheaper, last-resort wood.


Whoo! That was fun. And I've branded myself a perma-nerd.
[Thanks to the Online Etymology Dictionary for my info.]

A little follow-up.

The last post, about Huck Finn, was rather passionate. And while I still support my opinion (of course I do!), I've been thinking it over and researching. So here's a bit of balance: A discussion between New York Times contributors (Ivy League English and law professors, language and literature experts, and recognized authors) about the edits made to Huck Finn.

Do Word Changes Alter 'Huckleberry Finn'?

Well I never...

Oh my word. I'm working on a company rationale. And happened to look up the word "movement" in the thesaurus. Third entry:

Main Entry:	movement
Part of Speech:	noun
Related Adjectives:	brachiating, catabatic, circumambient, coxinutant, cursorial, dextrosinistral, digitigrade, drawing, erratic, feirie, formicating, gestic, glad, in motion, irpe, irreptitious, laterigrade, left, mercurial, mobile, motile, motive, motory, movable, moving, murgeoning, nomadic, paradromic, pedestrious, pinnigrade, proal, projectile, pronograde, propelled, propelling, propulsive, recoiling, rectigrade, reptant, restless, shanks, sinistrodextral, subsultive, sure, transitional, unquiet, vermigrade, viaggiatory, wandle

Never have I ever seen such a delicious collection of words! It'll take me days to digest all of this...

But can you ever be just whelmed?

3 points to the namer of the movie that the headline comes from.

Word question of the week: is mittently a word?

Approximate Context: An occasional event that happened intermittently began occurring mittently.

My conclusion: While I can see what point the speaker was trying to convey, he actually used an obsolete word wrong. Mittent means "emitting" - or did. It's no longer in use. He made it an adverb, but that doesn't work. Back to grade school:
How did the event occur? Mittently.
I'm not buying it.

Tweeted the question to Mighty Red Pen this morning and generated a lot of interesting insights. Twitter's growing on me.

That's all for now.

Present your argument clearly, arm yourself with cutting wit and of course, bob and weave!

We are debating in the office today. I asked, "How do you spell sike?" The answers were varied, vigorously defended, and came from surprising parties. See if you can follow this (and perhaps interpret?):
Web developer, male: It's psych. (No evidence or reasoning; he held firm that he was just right.)
Office manager, female: It's sike. I speak ebonics, look it up online! (Adamant)
Copywriter, male: It's psych, as in psyched out. Sike is a misspelling, and it should always be psych. (Used dictionary - traditional and urban - to point out original spelling was psych; sike is a deterioration; therefore it's psych.)
Front end developer, female: It's sike, because while it may have originated as psych, if you're using it in a sarcastic manner at the end of a sentence, of course you'll misspell it. (I agree with her reasoning.)
Creative director, male: It's psych. (Listened to mine and FE dev's reasoning.) That makes sense. (He's neutral.)

We're at an impasse here, people! What do you think?

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

See if you can identify the word I didn't know in this sentence: "The personality might slowly elide until it is no longer recognizable or regainable as itself; it may cease to be the personality that goes with a particular self." (Larry McMurtry, from Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, in "Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression," by Nell Casey)


elide: to omit, or suppress; to merge, as in "whole periods are elided into mere seconds on the silver screen;" from the Latin for "strike out"


McMurtry's essay explores self-hood after a quad bypass. It's frightening, yet puts words to things I have always wondered about (anaesthesia, major surgery, and the emotional/spiritual effects). The book is a collection of essays by writers on depression, and as morbid as it sounds, it's very well-written and engaging.


The book only confirms my private opinion: all writers suffer what I call "Virginia Woolf days": days when you feel those dark voices nibbling along the edges of your mind, when the clouds press down on your shoulders, when all you can see before you is a calendar list of like days and your mind simply refuses to open up enough to consider the possibility of sunshine. Woolf filled her pockets with stones, walked to the river's edge, removed her shoes, left her stick in the grass, and walked into the river. Her letter to her husband is a beautiful, bitter-sweet testament of their marriage, his courage, and her sensitivity:

Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.

On that note, I'm going to look at some LOLCatz...

By fairy hands their knell is rung.

I've been schooled this week.  In words, I mean.  And I totally blame being sick for my failing wits.

First, "soporific" means "sleep-inducing" (which even my mom knew!).  I guessed something along the lines of "droning," "over-indulged," or "soaking in."  [Editor's note: Just because I provide three different definitions for a word doesn't mean I'm confused.  It just means that I'm really good at making stuff up, and the stuff I make up is really creative and rather convincing.  You know you're jealous.]

Second, "querulous" means "contentious, prone to argument."  I was close with "whining, protesting; a feeble attempt at contradiction."

Third, I learned this morning that it's "jibe," not "jive."  As in, "The story you told about your mom's vacation doesn't jibe with the photographic evidence of her whereabouts that weekend."  And "jive" has always made so much sense!  (Think about it: dancing - one set of facts either dances well or doesn't with the second set of facts... Sad loss.)  Although it must be noted that I prefer the British English spelling of it to the American English: gybe vs. jibe.


In other news, I've had a lot of downtime this week (what with my mind being clogged and work being slow).  So I've indulged in a lot of fiction reading.

I re-discovered the Endicott Studio website, managed by Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, and Ellen Kushner (to name a very few).  It is a collection of visual, literary, and academic explorations of the Mythic Arts - I've literally lost myself within the pages of it for the last week.  I've been reading through the Journal of Mythic Arts' fiction and non-fiction archives.  [Second Editor's Note: This site is of particular interest to me; my college thesis examined re-centering myth and fairy tale.  I've immersed myself in all things mythic for the last 6 years at least.]

So after reading all morning, I came home yesterday with a panicky urge to re-read my two favorite books of all time: The Hero & the Crown and The Blue Sword, both by Robin McKinley.  They were not on my shelves!  I searched, but know my book filing system, and they weren't there.  All I could conclude was I'd loaned them out (God knows why), and they hadn't come back (for the same reason most loaned books don't come back).  I penned the dogs in the kitchen and bolted to Grumpy's (my old place of employment and the nearest used bookstore), but only came up with The Hero & the Crown.  It will do for now, but I must find another copy of The Blue Sword - these are the only two books I've ever read more than once.  I must have them on hand at all times!  [Third Editor's Note: Only librophiles will understand this compulsion - I can't explain it.  But I have never felt more urgent about reading a book than I did yesterday.  And I couldn't rest until I'd found it.  I almost considered driving across town to the accursed McKay's.  Almost.]

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

Web fail of the day:

I typed "expert" into Thesaurus.com's search bar, hit enter.

There are no results for "expert."


I confess I snorted.  Reading further, Thesaurus.com asked,

Did you mean "expert"?


*Face-palm.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

There once was a girl. She cut her own hair and wore what she pleased (and declined to wear what she didn't please). She wasn't very good with numbers or distance, or money or time. But she could weave worlds with her words. This girl worked very hard to have a few nice things: a well-lighted home, a stocked pantry, and of course, books. But what she dearly wished was to pay her bills with words, to feast on them every night, and to wake up to a fresh torrent of words every day. One day, the girl decided that was it! She'd had enough. She said, "That's it! I've had enough. I will live by my words. It may not be easy, and sometimes it may not be fun, but it is what I am and what I do, so I will be it and do it with every particle of myself." That day, the girl stepped one foot off the path - the path that was so heavily trod by so many many feet before her that it was smooth and broad and far too easy to follow - and she felt the grass between her toes. The sunshine seemed warmer and thicker, the air beside the path was less dusty, and her nose was no longer filled with the scents of sweat and tears and pain. That day the girl always remembered as the "Grass Between My Toes" day. That day was the end of something old and routine and tired and the beginning of something fresh and frightening and right.