Here Be Monsters

Words for a Sounding

This post is dedicated to the Nieman class of 2013.

 

Criticism is not, ultimately, something one does. It gestures toward who one is.
— James Engell, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

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In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single life span.
— Mary Ruefle

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The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
— Archilochus

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In the artist of all kinds I think one can detect an inherent dilemma, which belongs to the coexistence of two trends, the urgent need to communicate and the still more urgent need not to be found.
— D.W. Winnicott

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Everything important always begins from something trivial.
— Donald Hall

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Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
— Margaret Mead

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The loss of a secret makes one joyous, if one’s intent is toward fellowship.
— Mary Ruefle

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Failure is deeper than success. Failure is what we learn from, mostly.
— Rebecca Solnit

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A lot of people … pick up grammar and syntax effortlessly through their reading. … The language sticks to them like cat hair to black trousers, and they do things correctly without knowing why.
— Kitty Burns Florey

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Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
— Joan Didion

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We navigate by stories, but sometimes we only escape by abandoning them.
— Rebecca Solnit

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I stopped dancing. In all the rest of my life no other activity would ever be even remotely as difficult, exhausting, or demanding, or grant me as much joy.
— Alma Guillermoprieto

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True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.
— Alexander Pope

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Style is a very simple matter: all rhythm. Once you get that you can’t use the wrong words.
— Virginia Woolf

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Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.
— James Salter

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To act is so easy; to think is so hard!
— Matthew Arnold, after Goethe

 

In which I review a new book by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, on questions of truth, beauty and accuracy in writing that appears to be (but may not be) nonfiction.

‘Infinite Jest’ Check-in #3, or: Word

Over at Page Views, the new literary blog helmed by Alexander Nazaryan, this item reminded me that many months ago, I meant to write here about all the words I looked up while reading Infinite Jest.

Knowing what I was in for, vocabulariwise, I had vowed, at the outset, to look up and write down every word in the novel I didn't know. And I held to this promise quite well. Until I didn’t.

At first, I was surprised to find that I didn’t have to look up nearly as many words as I’d anticipated. But then the going got slower. And I didn’t always have my trusty notebook at hand while reading. Or I was so into the flow of reading that I didn’t want to interrupt that flow, even for a quick riffle through the dictionary. Or I did interrupt the flow to look up a word, but then didn’t feel like writing out the definition.

“You mean ... you were lazy?”

“Well. Yes.”

I also soon realized that my repeatedly pausing to write out definitions was going to seriously threaten my ability to hit my end-of-summer reading deadline. Now, one might argue that my not looking up words every time I didn’t know them must have seriously impeded my understanding of certain passages — a sharp point, for sure, but that's a whole other blog post in itself.

Anyway: I do have a partial list of looked-up words. And so in the spirit of sharing — because lists, we love them! — here you go:

Words Looked Up While Reading Infinite Jest

aigrette — 1. a bunch of the long, white, showy plumes of the egret, once worn for ornament on a hat or in the hair; 2. any ornament like this

aleatory — of or pertaining to chance

anfractuous — sinuous or circuitous

apocope — loss or omission of the last letter, syllable or part of a word, e.g., in the derivation of curio from curiosity

assuasive — soothing, allaying [ed. note: weird that nearly half these words begin with “a”]

enfilade — 1. a volley of gunfire directed along a line from end to end; 2. a suite of rooms with doorways in line with each other [ed note: I no longer have any idea what context this word appeared in]

erumpent — bursting forth

fulgurant — like or full of lightning; flashing

lapidary — characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting (e.g., a lapidary style)

misprision — 1. a mistake, especially one due to misreading, either deliberate or unintended, or to misunderstanding; 2. scorn; contempt; 3. misconduct or neglect of duty, especially by a public official [ed. note: sense 1 = apropos, considering our topic]

prandial — of or pertaining to a meal

wen — a cyst

A Review

In which I provide my 2 cents on Elissa Schappell's new story collection, Blueprints for Building Better Girls.