Quote of the Day

"Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him."

William James, quoted by Marianne Moore in the "Foreword" to the Marianne Moore Reader, quoted by Charles Molesworth in Marianne Moore: A Literary Life, quoted by J.K. Kelley on Write Now.

Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking

This week marks the birthday of the author who created that terribly cute character Pippi Longstocking. Pippi claimed that her full name was Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking. Her creator had an equally ambitious name, Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren.

I have to admit that I didn't come to know and love Pippi through Ms. Lindgren's books. I recall a Saturday morning television adaptation that ran during my childhood (in the 1980s) with fantastically bad dubbing into English over the original Swedish. I believe an animated Pippi was recently released that I have yet to see, nor plan to see. I appreciate animation but Pippi needs a flesh-and-blood actress and an assorted menagerie of animals to round out the cast. I believe the animals talk, right? I know she lived alone in a rambling Victorian house with a monkey and her horse. I remember them having conversations. Animated talking animals is just plain cheating. And I know she was a very, very strong girl--able to lift cars and the like.

If I had to bet money on whether or not the animals were loquacious, I wouldn't bet a dime on my memory. Especially these days. I have to admit that I have always possessed a degree of whimsical absentmindedness. (Back in the day, it was known as air-headedness.) I lose my keys. I leave for the airport without knowing which airline I am flying. Friends call me to remind me to attend social functions in my honor. Mostly it is harmless. Mostly it is annoying for me and not for others. (I hope.)

This past Monday I had prepared a Trader Joe's brown paper bag filled with items that needed to be hauled via metro to the post office. I had big plans to mail several packages. The key package contained a reverse-birthday gift. You would think that life long friends could remember each other's birthdays. Well, like attracts like because my friend and I resorted to reverse birthdays several years ago. On his birthday (sometime in earlyish July) he sends me a gift. On my birthday (mid-Novemberish), I send him a gift. This way we ALWAYS remember to celebrate each other! I was enormously proud of myself because I had his gift ready to go and ready to mailed in time to arrive for my birthday.

I lugged the bag of stuff--including several books--to the metro. Walked to the post office. And the door was locked. I rattled the handle. I sighed. Yes, it was Veteran's Day. Deeper sigh. I turned around and did the reverse trip home. I entered my foyer and set down my bag of goodies to dig for my mail key. I opened my mail box and then, duh, it was still Veteran's Day. I cursed our third floor walk up. I cursed my wasted trip.

The package was eventually mailed after my birthday--more than a week later. Luckily reverse birthdays are month-based instead of actual date-of-birth centric. Ms. Pippi Longstocking would admire our creative reverse birthday pluck. She would not, however, condone my lack of outing guile.

More Words Gathered

aboulie, abulia
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from 2a- + Greek boul will
Date: circa 1864
: abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions

jeremiad
Function: noun
Etymology: French jérémiade, from Jérémie Jeremiah, from Late Latin Jeremias
Date: 1780
: a prolonged lamentation or complaint; also : a cautionary or angry harangue

adumbrate
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Latin adumbratus, past participle of adumbrare, from ad- + umbra shadow -- more at UMBRAGE
Date: 1581
1 : to foreshadow vaguely : INTIMATE
2 : to suggest, disclose, or outline partially
3 : OVERSHADOW, OBSCURE

octothorpe
: the symbol #
Example sentence:
Barry noticed the pound sign on the telephone and remarked about how much the octothorpe resembled a tic-tac-toe grid.

catachesis
Etymology: Latin, from Greek katachrsis misuse, from katachrsthai to use up, misuse, from kata- + chrsthai to use
Date: 1550
1 : use of the wrong word for the context
2 : use of a forced and especially paradoxical figure of speech (as blind mouths)

weltanschauung
Function: noun
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: German, from Welt world + Anschauung view
Date: 1868
: a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint

litotes
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek litots, from litos simple, perhaps from lit-, lis linen cloth
Date: 1589
: understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary (as in "not a bad singer" or "not unhappy")

parataxis
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, act of placing side by side, from paratassein to place side by side, from para- + tassein to arrange
Date: circa 1842
: the placing of clauses or phrases one after another without coordinating or subordinating connectives

Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Marianne Moore: Voracities and Verities Sometimes are Interacting

___I don't like diamonds;
the emerald's "grass-lamp glow" is better;
_____and unobtrusiveness is dazzling,
_______upon occasion.
_____Some kinds of gratitude are trying.

___Poets, don't make a fuss;
the elephant's "crooked trumpet" "doth write";
_____and to a tiger-book I am reading -
_______I think you know the one -
_____I am under obligation.

_______One may be pardoned, yes I know
_______one may, for love undying.

Moore's footnote:  Tiger-book:  Major James Corbett's 
Man-Eaters of Kumaon

Quote of the Day

"The thing is to see the vision and not deny it; to care and admit that we do"

Marianne Moore, The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 426

More Words Gathered

legerdemain
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French leger de main light of hand
Date: 15th century
1 : SLEIGHT OF HAND
2 : a display of skill or adroitness

With startling legerdemain she presses the reader toward the truth, as Costello has suggested,
and just for a moment we glimpse the genuine, in this case the fact that
Marianne Moore is playing with the word "imagine" and we see an entirely
opposite meaning in the passage.

au courant
Function: adjective
Etymology: French, literally, in the current
Date: 1762
1 a : fully informed : UP-TO-DATE b : FASHIONABLE, STYLISH
2 : fully familiar : CONVERSANT

As different as she was from the fashionably au courant, she was encouraged by her friends' romantic but common insistence on the right to be oneself, while at the same time she was given to distrusting the self.

gallimaufry
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -fries
Etymology: Middle French galimafree stew
Date: circa 1556
: HODGEPODGE

One Laptop Per Child

Check out this video report by New York Time's David Pouge:

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=6ffd976ed367bacae4171dd4999d36431c84b0f5

Robert Frost: Unharvested

UNHARVESTED

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what has made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

New Online Novel Contests

New York Times
October 1, 2007
Publishers Seek Talent Online
By MOTOKO RICH

Joining the growing list of publishers that use public votes to decide what to publish, Penguin Group is teaming with Amazon.com and Hewlett Packard for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From today through Nov. 5, contestants from 20 countries can submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon, which will assign a small group of its top-rated online reviewers to evaluate 5,000-word excerpts and narrow the field to 1,000.

The full manuscripts of those semifinalists will be submitted to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. Amazon will post the reviews, along with excerpts, online, where customers can make comments. Using those comments and the magazine’s reviews, Penguin will winnow the field to 100 finalists who will get two readings by Penguin editors. When a final 10 manuscripts are selected, a panel including Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the current nonfiction paperback best seller “Eat, Pray, Love,” and John Freeman, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, will read and post comments on the novels at Amazon. Readers can then vote on the winner, who will receive a publishing contract and a $25,000 advance from Penguin.

Separately, Borders Group, the bookstore chain, is teaming with Gather.com, the social networking site, and Court TV to solicit unpublished manuscripts from mystery or crime writers. A panel of judges that includes the writers Harlan Coben and Sandra Brown will crown the winner from a pool of finalists selected by voters on Gather.com. The winner will receive a $5,000 advance and will be published by Borders itself.

Link to New York Times Article