word: susurrus

A wonderful, onomatopoeic word discovery in Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men:

Another and larger part of Tiffany's brain was thinking of the word susurrus. It was a word that not many people have thought about, ever. [...]
Susurrus... according to her grandmother's dictionary, it meant "a low soft sound, as of whispering or muttering." Tiffany liked the taste of the word. It made her think of mysterious people in long cloaks whispering important secrets behind a door: susurrusssusurrusss... (4)

Emphasis not mine.

word: megrims

I happened across this interesting word/phrase while reading Fundraising the Dead by Sheila Connolly -

"And, Nell? I'm sorry that you had to be the one to stumble into this. I hope you aren't too upset, because I need you to help me--help the Society--through this difficult time."
Well, it was nice that he had thought about it. But I had no intention of lapsing into a fit of the megrims, whatever they were. I would soldier on, and I would save any mourning for poor [so-and-so] until later, when I got home. (68, emphasis mine)

Now out of common usage, megrim means depression or dejection, low spirits.  The megrims are comparable to the blues.  It can also mean a whim / fancy / caprice, though I think that usage was less common.

Apparently this is where we get the word migraine.

There is also a type of fish called the megrim.  As I am not a fan of this class, I refrained from doing too much research into this particular usage of the word.  The megrim (according to the one image I saw) is pale (perhaps translucent) and has a strange, squashed-looking face.

Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa by Benjamin Constable

source: Netgalley (review copy)

Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa by Benjamin Constable

Ever since writing was invented, people have been documenting the contents of their brains, giving names to ideas, noting their dreams, and distorting their memories and making up new ones. Lifetimes of scribbling, and oceans of ink. Whole forests of trees reduced to pulp for us to collect our words. What if nobody reads them? I think we write to be read, even if we tell ourselves we don't. But the vast majority of everything written fails in its most basic purpose and has never been read by another. Where are you to read my works, Tomomi Ishikawa? Are we talking to ourselves? (175)

One day Benjamin Constable, a 38-year-old Brit living in Paris, comes home to find a letter from his friend Tomomi (Butterfly) Ishikawa, an American expatriate, slipped underneath the door of his apartment. In that letter, Butterfly informs Ben that she's committed suicide and that he is "the inheritor of a thing, or many things, [she's] been making for years, since long before [she] knew of [his] existence--since [her] childhood, in fact" (21). Ben follows a series of clues that lead him to places in Paris and later New York that had special meaning to Butterfly. The more clues Ben follows, the more he learns about his friend. If the disturbing tales contained in the series of notebooks Butterfly left for him to find are any indication, Ben didn't know her well at all.

Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa is a difficult book to describe. Horrifying and playful are the first two adjectives that come to mind. If I had to categorize it, I'd call is a literary psychological thriller.  It is also a bit of a love letter to both Paris and New York City.

In a way I think Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa may be more about the process of writing than it is about anything else, or rather the tension between fact and fiction that is inherent in writing, autobiographical or not. Butterfly's clues and the way they are presented to him make Ben question the truth of what he is being told. Constable forces his readers to experience that same uncertainty by making himself the protagonist in his debut novel.

The novel is compelling, but I can't say that I enjoyed reading it.  After a certain point,¹ I dreaded picking it back up again each time I set it down. Though early on in the novel, I imagined how wonderful it would be to be in Paris with Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa as a guidebook.² I also didn't quite care for the ending, though I understand why Constable decided to end it the way that he did.³

I can imagine Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa being the source of a particularly fruitful undergraduate literature seminar discussion.

I had to include a featured word, because I love how Constable defined tickety-boo within the narrative:

'Tickety-boo?'
'Yes, it's British English. It means everything is running perfectly, or according to plan, and portrays a sense of contentedness with the current situation.' (173)

footnotes:

1. The discovery of the first notebook and the revelation of its contents.
2. While I live close enough to New York City to use Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa as a guide to some of its special places, the combination of the summer weather we are experiencing now (I can't even imagine tromping around the city in this heat) and the onset of the horrifying aspect of the novel put me off the idea.
3. To leave room for the uncertainty of which he seems so fond.

disclosure: I received a review copy of Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa from Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster) via NetGalley.

national poetry month: charles simic

While searching for a poem to feature this week I came across "In the Library" by Charles Simic (Dušan "Charles" Simić) and it was love at first run-through.  As I began to read more about Simic (a Pulitzer Prize-winner and onetime Poet Laureate), I grew increasingly embarrassed about the fact that I wasn't familiar with him and his work before.  All I can say in my defense is that poetry is not my bailiwick.¹

The text of the poem is below, but I recommend popping over to The Poetry Archive and listening to the recording they have made available of Simic reading "In the Library" (direct link to poem page).

"In the Library" by Charles Simic
for Octavio

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

"In the Library" is included in The Book of Gods and Devils and Sixty Poems (published on the occasion of Simic's appointment as Poet Laureate of the United States) and possibly in other collections of Simic's work.

1. bailiwick: area of interest, skill, or authority; jurisdiction.
   One of the higher-ups at work has a great affection for the word bailiwick and hearing him use it on a number of different occaions has sealed its meaning into my brain more successfully than the standard rule about using a new word in a sentence x-many times.

word: gloaming

All actresses have favourite words, and 'gloaming' was one of Laurel's. It was a pleasure to articulate, the sense of falling gloom and helpless encompassment inherent within the word's sound, and yet it was so close to 'glowing' that some of the latter's shine rubbed off on it.
(The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton, 66)

gloaming, n.
Twilight; dusk.

The word's etymology is particularly interesting given the above quote's reference to gloaming's closeness to glowing.

From Middle English gloming, from Old English glomung, from glom (dusk). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, glimpse, glass, arsenic, melancholy, and cholera. (Wordsmith)

word: mondegreen (redux)

Mondegreen (the mishearing or misinterpretation of a oft-heard phrase) is one of my favorite words.  It was the subject of a featured-word post back in March of 2010 (see post), but I've been wanting to post about it again.

'Tis the season for carols and my most recently discovered mondegreen comes from "Deck the Halls" -
Hail the new year's Latin lessons (actual lyric:  Hail the new, ye lads and lasses).  But, my desire to post about mondegreen has nothing to do with the holiday season, but rather with knitting and yarn craft. 

In September, indie yarn dyer Verdant Gryphon debuted a new yarn (a worsted weight blend of 60% Blue Faced Leicester wool, 20% baby camel, and 20% silk) called Mondegreen and they are using misheard song lyrics for all the colorway names.  This pleased me on so many different levels, even more so when I received one of the preview skeins (my review).  I made a pair of mitts for myself and they have have been getting quite a bit of use now that the weather has gotten colder.

Project:  Mondegreen flip-tops
Yarn:  Verdant Gryphon Mondegreen
Colorway / mondegreen: Two chickens in fried rice
Actual lyric:  Two tickets to paradise (Eddie Money, "Two Tickets to Paradise")

I loved knitting with the yarn so much that I requested a sweater quantity for my birthday (thank you, Mom!).

Colorway / mondegreen:  I wanna freak out and stab you
Actual lyric:  I wanna reach out and grab ya (Steve Miller Band, "Abracadabra")

I've also been keeping an eye on the new colorway releases not because I need more yarn (though knitting with this yarn is a joy), but because I'm getting such a kick out of the colorway names.

serenity

This week I had one of those exceedingly frustrating days that make you want to pull all your hair out.  On days like those, I'm in desperate need of some serenity.¹ Last year I bought myself this ring² from Etsy seller donnaOdesigns. For me it is a perfect reminder to breathe and to focus on what I actually can control.

My hand, my photo.
There are much better images available if you follow the links above.

It features the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to
Accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.

While the prayer is often misattributed to St. Francis of Assisi, I understand that is was actually written by an early 20th century theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr though the current, popular formula deviates from the original.³

1. Serenity: the state or quality of being serene, calm, or tranquil; not agitated.
2. The price has gone up about $15 since then, but I love it so much that I'd still buy it at the current price.
   If you want one for yourself, I'd recommend ordering a full size larger than the size you'd normally wear on your preferred finger. I had to send mine back to get resized because it didn't occur to me that I needed to size the finger near the first joint rather than at its base.  In any case, the donnaOdesigns was very accommodating.
3. "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other."

word: sardonic

Elizabeth had never been popular, indeed the more perceptive of the Meryton ladies occasionally suspected that Miss Lizzy was privately laughing at them. They also accused her of being sardonic, and although there was uncertainty about the meaning of the word, they knew that it was not a desirable quality in a woman, being one which gentlemen particularly disliked. (Death Comes to Pemberley, 9; emphasis mine)

I began (with cautious optimism) P.D. James' nod to Austen this evening. When I came across the passage above, I knew that I must share it in a featured-word post. 

From the OED (vol. 8, part 2, 1914) -

Sardonic, adj.
Of laughter, a smile: Bitter, scornful, mocking. Hence of a person, personal attribute, etc.: Characterized by or exhibiting bitterness, scorn or mockery. (111)

steampunk style

Steampunk has gotten quite a bit of attention on the blog (see posts), but the focus has always been on the fiction. While steampunk is at heart a literary subgenre,¹ for many it is first and foremost a design aesthetic. And one of the things steampunk aficionados like to do most is dress up to attend steampunk-themed events.

Items characteristic of steampunk fashion are under-bust corsets and goggles adorned with decorative metal elements. Individuals beginning to craft costumes are often admonished to begin with a items that are historically accurate to the period and then add shiny and creative details. Steampunk costumes often require a trips to both the local thrift and hardware stores before they are complete.

When I think of steampunk style, the word that often comes to mind is a made-up one, reproaesthetical. In Megan McCafferty's Bumped, reproaesthetical is a slang term meaning "having good genes" or "worthy of breeding with".  Obviously, that's not what I mean, but if one imagines the combination relying on historical reproduction (or the use of replicas) rather than sexual, my use of reproaesthetical likely begins to make more sense.

Steampunk style is a riff on historical style.  Historical reproductions (and authentic period items) can serve as a foundation, becoming steampunk with the addition of anachronistic decorative elements.  They can also inspire something completely new as illustrated by the images below (click on them for a bigger version of the images).

A friend's reproduction Victorian sewing box and tools

First, we have a portable 19th century sewing kit. Vintage implements (a delicately hand stitched pin cushion, threads both in the skeins and on thread winders, a silver-covered steel thimble in porcelain case, a pair of sharp metal scissors, and a variety of fancy needle cases made of bone and wood) are contained within a varnished wood case that is padded to protect its more fragile contents and set with a mirror that was used to reflect light onto stitchwork--an important feature in the perpetually dark, candle- or gas-lit world of the nineteenth-century.

Steampunk bracer constructed by R.H Mardigan Enterprises

The above is a streamlined steampunk version of the same tools. A workaday wooden needle case, brass thimble, miniature pincushion,² fancy brass scissors, and wooden spools of thread are mounted on a leather wrist guard. This "Tailor’s Assistant" is a compact solution that utilizes the "latest" Victorian technology (wooden spools were first introduced in the 1840s) to make a forearm-mounted sewing kit both stylish and practical.

1. Historical science fiction set often (though not exclusively) in Victorian London.
2. The tomato-shaped pincushion dates to the Victorian era when tomatoes were placed on the mantle of a new home to guarantee prosperity. Tomato stand-ins (red-fabric stuffed with wool or sawdust) were needed when the fruit was out of season. While tomatoes would be discarded when they started to spoil, the fabric substitutes were retained and put to use for pin storage. (Why are pincushions frequently made to resemble tomatoes?)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Read by Khristine Hvam
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone (trilogy), Book 1

Karou leads two lives. One is in the tangled streets of Prague, as an orphan and art student; the other in a clandestine workshop, overflowing with jars of teeth and wishes, run by the ram-horned magician, Brimstone—the closest thing to family Karou has ever known. She doesn't know where she came from, but she's about to find out. When Karou meets stunning, haunted Akiva, she finds a love whose roots drink deep of a violent past, and an ancient war that is far from over. Master storyteller Laini Taylor imagines a wholly unique fantasy about a forbidden love, an epic battle, and hope for a world remade.

The above is the synopsis that my library system provides for Daughter of Smoke and Bone in its digital media catalog (ie. the site I go to for e-books and e-audiobooks). I was in need of a new audiobook (and I'm endlessly fascinated by Prague) so I decided to check Daughter of Smoke and Bone out even though I wasn't sure I'd enjoy it as I often lose patience with high fantasy.

It did take me a little while to get into Daughter of Smoke and Bone and its story, but I never got overwhelmed by or irritated with the world Taylor created even though it includes seraphim and I usually have no patience with angel novels. Daughter of Smoke and Bone takes place primarily in the world as we know it today, though a series of portals provide access to a shop, manned by a group of chimaera,¹ that seems to exist as part of a mysterious parallel world.

The novel's protagonist, Karou, is an usually-skilled, blue-haired teen, who was literally raised by monsters.  Karou's foster-father, the mysterious Brimstone (whose features read as human, lion, and ram, among other things) is the proprietor of the not-of-this-world shop.  Brimstone sells wishes and buys teeth.  Karou's job is to act as his agent in the human world.  In addition to meeting Brimstone's regular suppliers who are unable or unwilling to visit the shop, Karou travels all over the world to procure particularly rare specimens.  When she's not running errands for Brimstone, Karou attends art school in Prague where she leads an only somewhat extraordinary life.

While Karou has a love-interest in Akiva, their relationship is not your typical young adult-novel romance. Karou and Akiva's relationship is exceedingly complicated as a result of complex external factors, not because of a love triangle or teenage angst. Their relationship is a significant part of Daughter of Smoke and Bone (and likely the entire trilogy), but the romance's role is to reveal the larger picture and serve as a catalyst for Karou to discover who she really is.

Even though Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the first in a trilogy, set-up and world-building don't overwhelm the narrative. The world Taylor has imagined is complex and well-constructed. The plot of Daughter of Smoke and Bone and the overarching, series-wide storyarch are well-balanced within the novel, and, while the novel's ending leaves readers wanting more (in the way of a sequel), there is sufficient resolution for them not to feel completely untethered.

In any case, I really enjoyed Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I highly recommend the audio version. Khristine Hvam does a wonderful job narrating it.

Days of Blood and Starlight, the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone, will be released in early November.

1. chimaera / chimera:   a monstrous creature composed of several different animals.  Also, per OED, an unreal creature of the imagination, a mere fancy; an un-found conception.
   The origins of the word lie in Greek mythology.  The creature chimera--a fire-breathing goat-lion-snake hybrid from Lycia--is referenced in the Iliad among other places.

The History of the English Language in Ten Minutes

Russell discovered this YouTube video, a compilation of Open University's History of the English Language in 10 Minutes series, and shared it with me. It's a quick, humorous, and informative overview of the development of the English language, which is very much in keeping with this blog's featured-word theme. The video (series) also happens to be a great little piece of publicity for Open University, a UK-based online university (n.b. one of my internet friends is an OU student and she seems pleased with it).

Open University's History of the English Language in 10 Minutes is divided into ten parts: Anglo-Saxon, The Norman Conquest, Shakespeare, The King James Bible, The English of Science, English and Empire (my favorite), The Age of the Dictionary (strangely enough there's no specific mention of the OED), American English, Internet English, and Global English. You can watch them in one fell swoop¹ by following the link in the first line of this post, or one by one through the original site, linked elsewhere.

Highly recommended.

1. See MacBeth. Another phrase that could have been included in the Shakespeare episode.

scent and a review of The Book of Lost Fragrances

I reviewed Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent almost exactly two years ago (see review). Since then I've nearly finished a bottle of Hermés' Un Jardin sur le Nil, one of the perfumes whose development Burr chronicles in the book, and developed a fascination with perfume. Reading about perfume can be quit difficult because it requires fragrance vocabulary (chypre? that means: with citrus top notes and woodsy base notes) and an extensive flavor knowledge (vetiver? that's a grass native to India; no idea what it smells like) in order to describe something that is highly experiential. I follow a number of fragrance blogs and make note of perfumes that sound like something I might like, but I'll admit that it really still is all Greek to me. I'm beginning to figure out how scents I enjoy are commonly described, but I'd never be able to a purchase a perfume scent unsniffed.

A week or two ago my friend Nancy (another fragrance enthusiast) pointed me to author M.J. Rose's new book, The Book of Lost Fragrances, and the fact that individuals who preorder it can get a free sample of a perfume inspired by the novel (this promotion ends March 1, details here). I really love the fact that there is a fragrance tie-in to this book and I think it might actually get me to preorder the book if I had a budget for personal book acquisition and made a practice of buying hardcovers when they first came out. I'd already requested a review copy from Atria Books, a Simon and Schuster imprint, via NetGalley so I decided that I'd read it sooner rather than later.

The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose

After the death of their father, Robert and Jacinthe L'Etoile inherit the family's distinguished perfume house, which is on the brink of financial ruin. Tensions between the siblings are high. Jac wants to sell two of the house's signature fragrances to keep the business afloat, while Robbie believes that he can find another way to save the struggling firm.

Family lore holds that a L'Etoile ancestor traveled to Egypt where he found a book formulas from Cleopatra's fragrance factory, which included a soul-mate perfume. When Robbie disappears after discovering what seems to be an priceless antiquity in their father's studio, ever-sceptical Jac is forced to consider the fact that the ancient memory aid might be more than just a legend and that people are willing to kill for it.

The novel's prologue takes the form of a 2007 newspaper article about a new regulation issued by China's State Administration for Religious Affairs that bans the reincarnation of Tibet's living Buddhas without permission. The Book of Lost Fragrances' narrative follows a number of different characters including a few Chinese and Tibetan throughout, but the direct connection to House of L'Etoile is made when Robbie, a practicing Buddhist, announces his plan to give the artifact to the Dalai Llama.

The Book of Lost Fragrances is compelling reading, but I think that it could have been better. I don't mind the choppy narrative, that happens when perspective changes as often as it did, but there seemed to be a bit too much in the way of digression which is problematic in a thriller where tension is so important. Additionally some things about the plot felt forced or too convenient and some of the twists were obvious to me quite far off.

I did like extent to which scent was incorporated into the story and I loved that the siblings had a special scent language that they developed as children. I also appreciated the author's note, in which Rose separates fact from fiction.

There's a description of Sleepy Hollow that I'll highlight in a separate post.

The Book of Lost Fragrances will be released in mid March.

disclosure: I received a review copy of The Book of Lost Fragrances from Atria Books via NetGalley.

Marrying Anita by Anita Jain

Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India by Anita Jain

A few months ago, I mentioned receiving Marrying Anita as a gift for my birthday (see post). Marrying Anita is a memoir in which the author recounts what happened when she, a 32-year-old Indian-American, grew tired of the New York dating scene decided to return to move to New Delhi to find a husband. Just to be clear, the book is not about arranged marriage despite the phrase-dropping in the synopsis and press coverage. Arranged marriage is discussed because it is an integral part of Indian culture, but the author's personal experience with arranged marriage is limited to her father managing profiles on online marriage sites for her.

I'd heard Jain interviewed on NPR when the book first came out, which is how Marrying Anita ended up on my wishlist. I have to admit that while I was intrigued by the premise, I was a bit reticent about reading it because of the baggage I carry from my first-hand experience¹ with India's marriage culture. I did read Marrying Anita though and I'm none worse for the wear.

Marrying Anita really wasn't what I expected. A full explanation would require including some spoilers and I don't like to do that. I'll stick with the things that I can mention without ruining things for future readers of the memoir. I was surprised at how open Jain is about her liaisons (and drinking and drug use). I imagine her parents being horrified and their more conservative friends and relatives (who no doubt read the book as soon as it was released) significantly more so. Jain makes much of this New India, but what's deemed acceptable among the nation's young urbanites is not necessarily indicative of culture-wide acquiescence.

I had a hard time relating to the author-narrator. I found Jain's need to pepper her narrative with SAT words (plangency² appears in the second paragraph of her prologue) a bit irritating, but I was able to ignore that as I became accustomed to her writing style. More significantly, her actions and the harshness with which she describes individuals was off-putting. It seemed like every time I warmed up to Jain, she went ahead and did or said something that made me dislike her again. I do wonder though how the book's publication has affected her life and her love life.

Marrying Anita's synopsis mentions "disarming candor" and "refreshingly honest". The author is honest and candid, often disarmingly so, but unfortunately I didn't find Marrying Anita refreshing.

1. as an inappropriate potential bride
2. plangency - n. resonance (possibly deep resonance or mournful resonance)

word: fair

Earlier today I happened upon a set of old articles on ALTA Language Services' Beyond Words blog thanks to the University of Chicago Magazine's twitter account.

October 2008's Ten most difficult words to translate was followed by May 2009's Five more difficult words to translate. This set of fifteen possibly untranslatable words comes from an eclectic set of languages (including a few with which I was completely unfamiliar). The only English word on the list was fairness, which was the subject of an Atlantic Monthly article and Beyond Words blog post earlier in 2009.

In Does fairness translate?: an economist and a linguist delve into the cross cultural variation of what we consider fair blog author Manny fulls together the various threads of the debate sparked by Bart Wilson's Atlantic Monthly article in what he refers to as a "nerdy linguistic mashup" and it's fascinating.

Is the concept of fairness uniquely Anglo-American? I don't think so, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at our 1956 edition of A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles, edited by Mitford M. Mathews of the U of C Press's now defunct Dictionary Department.
The word fair's first appearance (p. 577) explicates its usage as a noun as in a country fair or a church fair, with a mention of American football's fair ("technical name of putting the ball in play from the side line when out of bounds" per P.H. Davis, 1911).
More relevant to the question at hand are fair's adjectival uses (577-578). Interestingly the first entry regards the classification of cotton by quality. The various baseball-related uses (ie. fair vs. foul) appear second and never stray from the technical into the philosophical (n.b. fair ball is substantial enough to warrant its own entry). The third entry pertains to the finish of leather on leather goods. The fourth and final annotation delineates a number of frequent compound words/phrases (fair catch, fair-haired, fair shake, etc.).

phrase: sui generis

When reading I often find myself bemoaning the fact that I've never studied Latin.  The Latin phrase of the day is sui generis,¹ which more or less means "in a class of its own." Apparently generis is the genitive case of genus (which we should all know from taxonomy) and sui means "self" or in this case "of him/her/itself."

1. I came across this phrase in a discussion of Scottish author Alasdair Gray and his work.

word: concinnitous

I've been working my way through Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. ("working" because science fiction is a bit challenging for me)

Last night I came upon an interesting unfamiliar word, presented here in context:

"Pardon me, Your Honor, the concept is not easy to explain--there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack--signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired." (102)

Obviously Stephenson, in the voice of Miss Pao, provides a nice explanation, but I felt the need to dig a little deeper.

Apparently concinnitous (adjective) is an anglicized version of the Latin concinnitas (root concinnus). The noun concinnity seems to be more widely used (though mostly with regard to language or rhetoric).

I really do need to learn Latin.

word: mellifluous

All day I've had the word mellifluous stuck in my head like a song.
What a lovely word with which to spend the day.

mellifluous (adj.)
smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding
It can also mean flowing with honey or sweet (as in sweetened with honey).

a juicy find

This week as I was browsing the State University of New York Press catalogs, I came across a particularly juicy title from their Excelsior Editions¹ and I just had to share.

Arsenic and Clam Chowder by James D. Livingston

Arsenic and Clam Chowder recounts the sensational 1896 murder trial of Mary Alice Livingston, a member of one of the most prestigious families in New York, who was accused of murdering her own mother, Evelina Bliss. The bizarre instrument of death, an arsenic-laced pail of clam chowder, had been delivered to the victim by her ten-year-old granddaughter, and Livingston was arrested in her mourning clothes immediately after attending her mother’s funeral. In addition to being the mother of four out-of-wedlock children, the last born in prison while she was awaiting trial, Livingston faced the possibility of being the first woman to be executed in New York’s new-fangled electric chair, and all these lurid details made her arrest and trial the central focus of an all-out circulation war then underway between Joseph Pulitzer’s World and Randolph Hearst’s Journal.
The story is set against the electric backdrop of Gilded Age Manhattan. The arrival of skyscrapers, automobiles, motion pictures, and other modern marvels in the 1890s was transforming urban life with breathtaking speed, just as the battles of reformers against vice, police corruption, and Tammany Hall were transforming the city’s political life. The aspiring politician Teddy Roosevelt, the prolific inventor Thomas Edison, bon vivant Diamond Jim Brady, and his companion Lillian Russell were among Gotham’s larger-than-life personalities, and they all played cameo roles in the dramatic story of Mary Alice Livingston and her arsenic-laced clam chowder. In addition to telling a ripping good story, the book addresses a number of social and legal issues, among them capital punishment, equal rights for women, societal sexual standards, inheritance laws in regard to murder, gender bias of juries, and the meaning of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Arsenic and Clam Chowder doesn't seem like typical university-press fare, but it is written by a member of the academy (albeit a physist and engineer who happens to be an amateur historian). And it fits into the Excelsior imprint since the Livingstons are a prominent New York family.

I'm not particularly keen on the cover art (though I'll allow that it may look better in person that it does online), but the story is quite compelling, is it not?

1. Excelsior Editions is an imprint devoted to the history, culture, society, and environment of New York and its surrounding states.
   On a side note: excelsior is the motto of New York state (featured on the state seal and all); it means "ever higher."

Philip Roth

Announced today: American author Philip Roth is the winner of the 2011 Man Book International Prize.

The international prize is different from the normal Booker in that it recognizes a writer's oeuvre,¹ rather than an individual novel. A relatively new award, the international prize is awarded every two years. The previous winners are Chinua Achebe (2007), Ismail Kadare (2005), and Alice Munro (2009).

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I haven't read much Roth. Of his more recent novels, I've only read The Plot Against America, which I loved.² Nemesis is on my list as a must-read for both me and my mom.

The other contenders for this year's prize:

• Wang Anyi
• Juan Goytisolo
• James Kelman
• John le Carré, who withdrew
• Amin Maalouf
• David Malouf
• Dacia Maraini
• Rohinton Mistry
• Philip Pullman
• Marilynne Robinson
• Su Tong
• Anne Tyler

I'm unfamiliar with a few of these authors, which is something that needs to be rectified.

Image (c) Nancy Crampton

1. oeuvre: the lifework of a writer, artist, or composer. We get this lovely word from the French; it descended from the Latin opus.
2. I actually wrote a paper for an early American literature class comparing The Plot Against America to Hope Leslie by Catharine Sedgwick. Another aside. I ended up in this class because one on literature of the diaspora had been canceled and I was bound and determined to take something after all the hoops the department made me go through in order to register for a graduate-level course as a faculty member (seriously it was like applying to a PhD program; I even had to get letters from former professors and submit a writing sample).

it's not easy being green

"Unlike the dopey Oranges, who accepted their lot with self-effacing good humour, Greens never managed to rise above the feeling that no one took them seriously enough" (Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, 4).

I was quite taken with that line when I first came across it and I meant to share this quote when I typed up my post about Shades of Grey.

My favorite color is orange, but in many ways I may be a Green (see post regarding hubris).

A side note about the color grey. Whenever I set down the word, I always have the feeling that I've spelled it incorrectly. I decided to do a little research and I found out the root of this orthographic¹ predicament. Apparently the difficulty stems from a difference in British and American usage. Both the grey and gray spellings are correct, but grey is standard for the UK and gray for the US.

1. orthography: the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage (spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation).