Possible source for a few sentences to add to the new and improved little book on style, which I will be coming back to after I get back from vacation. It is the project for April and May, and if it spills over into June that is fine too; The Bacchae on Morningside Heights can wait, and I think that revising that will be my main summer project after I do this (direct link here) on June 26.
(Yes, I am going on a vacation over spring break - to see monkeys, sloths and venomous frogs, plus a host of other creatures [the resplendent quetzal!], in Costa Rica! Blog hiatus during travels: I'm not bringing my computer, and I think it will be good to have some time well and truly offline, though I am sure I will check email sporadically when there is convenient access. I'm leaving Friday middle of the day, and have a ridiculous pile of work that must be done before I go!)
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Much as I like "effulgence" (and "eldritch," which I didn't even know was a word), an author who would use that particular set of words in those particular proportions inspires the same twinge of dislike in me as, I suppose, anyone who would write about "a quaint harbor rich with visionings."
ReplyDeleteYes, more attractive in theory than in practice. But I wonder how many other writers could be identified just by a mini-list of three or four preferred words?
ReplyDeleteYeats. I don't have a concordance handy but gyre, gray, tower, sword.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there are distinctive words that I strongly associate with a particular author even if they are only used once or twice over the oeuvre: eleemosynary (Fielding), callipygian (Anthony Burgess).
ReplyDeleteYes. Though one has to worry about idiosyncrasies of association: e.g., I associate "callipygous" with Wodehouse mostly because that's where I read it first. It is distinctly not a Wodehousean word.
ReplyDeleteYes, whereas I almost certainly encountered "coprophagy" first in Gravity's Rainbow, and that _is_ a Pynchonesque word! We should all endeavor to avoid an unseemly fondness for certain words, I suppose....
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