Non-words for September

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Here are September’s Non-Words, with thanks to Mary Williams, Heidi Dalgarno, Robert Arellano, the late Wilkins-O’Reilly Zinn, and William della Santina. There are a couple of bonus words in the definitions too, like spoonerize and illiteral. (Illiterally should mean not literal, except of course when literally is used as a contranym.) I had a tough time choosing between hopelessless and hopelessnessless, which should mean different things. I learned a few new real words, like studentry, an old word for student body which deserves revival, finick (to be affectedly refined), and advertence (heedfulness) as well as some neologisms coined by others, like hoi olligoi (on the polloi pattern).

The words:

    gleeflect, v. to gleefully deflect other points of view with sarcasm, irony and snark to play to one’s audience. 1 Sep

    beloathed, adj. families or groups joined, Hatfield/McCoy-like, in multi-generational hatred. 2 Sep

    xeratask, v., to sit in the dry, warm, end-of-summer sunshine, doing nothing. 3 Sep

    etymologue: one who confuses etymological faithfulness with precise usage. 4 Sep

    impristine, adj. having a minute bit of dirt, error, or some other natural flaw that is noticeable but barely so. 5 Sep

    werror, n. (pronounced wee-rer) a metaphorical mirror in which we see our collective, illiteral reflection. 6 Sep

    twithear and overread, v. to overhear on Twitter (twithear) or on Facebook (overread, thanks to Mary Williams). 7 Sep

    thunklessness, n. the combination of malice and weakness that makes one a bully. 8 Sep

    gogamagog, n. any large but unidentifiable outdoor sculpture; may also refer to buildings. 9 Sep

    homescape, n. the landscape of a home and what the arrangement and display of things reveals (thx to Heidi Dalgarno). 10 Sep

    factuum, n. (pr. “fact-yoom”) a fact-free zone in politics characterized by misrepresentation, not facts. 11 Sep

    psoeuvre, n. (pronounced “psoover”) the pseudonymous works of a writer. 12 Sep

    detreat, v. to recover one’s equilibrium and catch up on work after a week of strategic planning retreats. 13 Sep

    gwid, n. (pronounced “gweed”) someone who is malleable but also quick to understand what is going on. 14 Sep

    anticdote, n. a story of personal hijinks told as an ice-breaker in a public speaking situation (tks Robert Arellano). 15 Sep

    humbiliate, v. to humiliate oneself by being excessively humble. 16 Sep

    debitnaire, adj. an image of class or breeding established on borrowed money. 17 Sep

    falquism, n. to overly value autonomy versus interdependence; to work in silos (from the Latin “fala,” a siege tower). 18 Sep

    nilieu [pr. nil-you] an environment or setting in which nothing much is happening. 19 Sep

    herdonism, to be pleasure-seeking in a totally conformist fashion; to follow the hedonistic herd. 20 Sep

    convocative, adj. oratory which simultaneously reassures, exhorts and provokes. 21 Sep

    blandemonium, n. irrational enthusiasm for something exceedingly ordinary—food, entertainment, books, etc. 22 Sep

    collectory, n. autoethnographic research by purposefully repurposing found objects (from Wilkins-O’Reilly Zinn). 23 Sep

    triple-dog, adj. anything daring or edgy but apt to pull in many directions (idea from William della Santina). 24 Sep

    liviousness, sensitivity to the feelings, needs and desires of others (backformed from obliviousness). 25 Sep

    hopelessless, adj. not exactly hopeful, but lacking hopelessness; having an average amount of hope. 26 Sep

    perfexhibitionist, n. one who flaunts his or her perfectionism as an excuse to procrastinate. 27 Sep

    assessin, n. one who removes the joy from something by measuring it. 28 Sep

    indubiate, v. to cause to doubt (when used as a noun, a group whose legitimacy is called into doubt). 29 Sep

    tumbletongued, adj. prone to misspeak, malaprop, or spoonerize. 30 Sep

Posted in Ideas and Opinions | Comments Off on Non-words for September

An Interview with Kristy Athens

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Kristy Athens is the author of Get Your Pitchfork On!: The Real Dirt on Country Living (Process Media, 2012). She has published nonfiction and short fiction in Culinate, Jackson Hole Review, High Desert Journal, and Barely South Review. She’s been a writer-in-residence for the Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence program and Soapstone and the editor of Columbia Gorge Magazine.

Kristy will read from Get Your Pitchfork On! on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 7 pm at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland.

EB: How did you come up with the idea for Get Your Pitchfork On!? And how did it evolve as you wrote the book?

KA: When my husband, Mike, and I moved to the Columbia River Gorge from Portland, we brought a stack of reference books, most notably Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living. As we started digging into country life, I realized that these extremely valuable books were lacking in a few areas. First, they covered 19th-century concerns such as melting snow for bathwater but not 21st-century issues like cell phone coverage. Second, they didn’t address the social aspects of small-town life. The latter turned out to be the hardest part for me. As a feminist, childless, atheist, political progressive, trying to make it as a mainstream ruralite was extremely challenging.

The most obvious way the book evolved was that it went from present to past tense when we had to sell our land in 2009. More significantly, I think it became a better book. The book I’d have written if we hadn’t failed would have been pretty smug, I hate to say. The experiences we had were traumatizing but made me a humbler person, and they made Get Your Pitchfork On! a better book.

EB: How did you decide on the format and topics for the book? It seems to apply to rural life anywhere.

KA: I made an effort to not write a regional book. I didn’t, unfortunately, have much of a travel budget, but I interviewed people around the country and did a lot of research outside of the Pacific Northwest.

The topics presented themselves in my experiences and in my research. I was constantly jotting notes to myself. The format was a little harder. First of all, I am a short-form writer, so to trick myself into writing a book-length work, it had to be a series of short pieces. I skipped around a lot at first to keep myself going. I futzed with the table of contents for a long time before I worked out where everything should live.

EB: The title suggests that rural life is hip. Is it? It also seems like a lot of work.

KA: Hello, understatement! Rural life is endless work, in fact. I gave it a “hip” title to communicate that the book is intended for urban/suburban people who dream of moving to the country. Actual ruralites don’t really need my book, unless they just want to compare notes.

I do think that there is a revival in interest in rural life. For a while in the mid-20th century, American culture was obsessed with “new” and “modern.” My husband’s grandmother, in the old Polish “Nordeast” part of Minneapolis, used to sneak next door in the cover of night to pull out her neighbor’s corn seedlings. She just could not abide someone bringing down the neighborhood by making it look like a hick farm! Plant some geraniums, for heaven’s sake! And even now, you see news stories where people are being fined by their neighborhood associations for tearing up their grass lawns and replacing them with native plants or raised garden beds.

EB: So, I’m reminded of the old TV show Green Acres, where Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor were constantly surprised by differences between city life and country life? Where there any Green Acres moments for you and your husband?

KA: It’s not really a fair comparison, because we wanted to move to the country; we weren’t dragged there like Eva Gabor’s character. And we are far from being Park Avenue socialites. That said, there were all kinds of surprises! One was how wonderful your neighbors can be. Our neighbors Jim and Sue were amazing advocates, willing to teach us anything we wanted to know. Jim plowed our driveway after every snowstorm; Sue brought food when I had a surgery. They were really generous people.

I’ll never forget the frantic phone call I received from a friend who moved with her family to the Hood River area about a year after we did. “We all have ticks on us!” she panicked. “What do I do?” By then, I was an old hand at pulling ticks …

There were endless differences; that is basically the premise of the book—living in the country is a foreign experience!

EB: When did the country life get easier? When did you get your pitchfork on?

KA: We spent six years on our land. I would say it started out easier and got harder as we got more involved. We dove in with both feet.

EB: It seems that you would be both further from your neighbors and closer. What was the community like?

KA: The Mid-Columbia is an interesting place—just as it is midway between the lush, rainy west and the dry, sagebrushy east, it is also midway between liberal and conservative, and rich and poor. There were a lot of people there who were loggers and orchardists, and lots of people who had high-tech jobs from Seattle and Portland. That dichotomy played itself out at every city council meeting and public event. Plus, it’s a national scenic area so the federal government and three Native American tribal communities were involved in local politics.

Our immediate neighbors varied quite a bit—Jim and Sue were certainly the closest (in proximity as well as friendship), but we were also friends with other nearby households. I dog sat for our neighbors to the north. Others we never met. And everything in between. Luckily, no one was hostile, though we did have to confront a neighbor once for poaching firewood from our property.

EB: Wildlife?

KA: Oh heavens, yes. Bats, cougars, coyotes, even bear! Birds: flickers, red-tailed hawks, osprey, swallows, spotted towhees, sapsuckers, Western tanagers, many more. Alligator and fence lizards. Pacific tree and red-legged frogs. Garter snakes, rubber boas, allegedly rattlers though I never saw one. Dozens of deer. Raccoons, of course. I had an adorable, tiny shrew running around my office one morning. All were welcome unless they wanted to menace my pets, livestock or garden (cue: gopher).

EB: Who should buy your book?

KA: Anyone who dreams of moving to the country. Even if you never take the plunge, there are a lot of things that are pertinent to urban life as well.

EB: Do you have other writing projects in the works?

KA: I have a lot of ideas; too many, actually. I’m trying to decide which one to focus on. Maybe a book for rural people who move to the city!

Posted in Interviews | Comments Off on An Interview with Kristy Athens

Book reviewing, wrap up

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

As I write this wrap up to the book reviewing series, I’m also beginning a book review, so it’s an opportunity to see if I can practice some of the wisdom of the wonderful guest posts, from Tod Davies, Jeff Baker, Adam Woog, Brian Griffith, Audrey Homan, Alisa Bowman, Kelli Stanley, Michael Erard and E. B. Strunkdotter. Recent news suggests that book reviewing is still a concern of authors and publishers. And some of the gaming of the system seems to be coming to light—witness the recent NY Times story on “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy” and the expose of British writer R. J. Ellis, who was for years faking his reviews on Amazon. And civility seems to be making a comeback in reviewing—or at least the most mean-spirited reviews are being discussed (though some argue that there is an epidemic of niceness). Perhaps with more and more books being published, consumers are thinking about reviews with a renewed seriousness.

Reflecting on the collective wisdom of the posts, I’m reminded of the century-old seven Cs of professional writing. Writing should be clear, correct, concise, complete, concrete, considerate, and conversational. Clear, and correct and concise, cover a lot of ground linguistically, but also in terms of taking the time to understand the book (so as to avoid the embarrassment of misidentifying a character or plot point). Complete and concrete entails understanding the place of the book in its genre or discipline—what has come before and how the book fits in that history—and justifying one’s remarks with textual or other evidence. Completeness also entails being honest about a book’s shortcomings but balancing that with a discussion of its strengths. Consideration comes into play in term of understanding and respecting what the author is trying to accomplish and subordinating your impulse to be clever (“This book create a great void in the field”) to the responsibility to be fair.

Finally, begin conversational helps the reviewer to focus on his or her readers—what do reader’s need to know about the book and what questions will they have about the book and your review.

Posted in Ideas and Opinions | Comments Off on Book reviewing, wrap up

Authors, Editors and Reviewers on the Art of Reviewing, Part 5: E. B. Strunksdotter

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

E. B. Strunksdotter (a pseudonym) works in the book reviewing profession.

    Ed Battistella has asked me to tell you “ what makes a good book review.” My humble opinion on the matter follows.

    • Accessibility/clarity–Jargon is the enemy of clarity. Brief reviews “cannot bear the weight of stylistic flourishes” (phrase stolen from another editor) . Reviewers should write as if for generalists. The following is unacceptable: “The intertextuality of the framing narrative objectively correlates with the synechdoche, the parataxeis being the vortex of the allegorical imagism (which is the doppelganger of metafiction).”

    • Accuracy—If the review cites a person, a book, a chapter title–any “fact” whatsoever—that fact should be correct and accurately spelled, punctuated, and so forth. Which is to say—check it!

    • Authority—Random opinions are irrelevant. The opinion should emanate from a verifiable expert on the subject.

    • Brevity—Do not ramble [see elsewhere in this document].

    • Comparisons—A critical review of 200 words can include citations of works that are comparable/complementary/superior/inferior/etc. This information is important to readers.

    • Fair mindedness (as in lacking bias)—A reviewer should let us know if he/she is an arch enemy of the person who wrote the book he/she just received for review; has a viewpoint entirely antithetical to that of the book; is first cousin once removed of the author; etc. Any such circumstance smacks of conflict of interest (real or perceived). The reviewer is therefore disqualified.

    • Focus—In reviewing a book on, say, Shakespeare, the reviewer should not digress and rattle on about, say, Elizabeth I’s ruffled collars (unless her ruffled collar is central to the book).

    • Good grammar—Eschew passive voice! Do not dangle participles or misplace modifiers! Mind your collective nouns (sheep nibble grass/a flock nibbles)! Put periods and commas inside quotation marks! And so on.

    • Opinion/evaluation—Without opinion, a review serves no better than the information on the publisher’s website or the jacket flaps. I don’t want synopsis; I want to know how valuable (and for whom) the reviewer thinks the book is. Should I buy/read it or should I give it a pass?

Posted in Ideas and Opinions | Comments Off on Authors, Editors and Reviewers on the Art of Reviewing, Part 5: E. B. Strunksdotter