Language authority Metcalf (The World in So Many Words, 1999, etc.) entices readers into the quirky, sometimes mysterious process by which brand-new words and phrases emerge to define the times in which we live.
Technology’s march crushes as many words as it anoints, observes Metcalf (English/MacMurray Coll.). “Chad,” for instance, even though it has recently spawned “hanging” and “pregnant” variants, will not outlive the punch card. The author’s main premise is that he has developed a formula that, applied to existing neologisms, will let us make an educated guess as to whether they will stick around or not. The FUDGE scale (Frequency of use, Unobtrusiveness, Diversity of users, Generation of other forms, Endurance) is mildly persuasive, but Metcalf’s text is not mission-critical stuff; it’s just plain fun. For example, the origin of the now universally accepted “okay” is traced to a wacky but thankfully short-lived fad among 19th-century writers and editors to use garbled acronyms as a kind of satiric commentary: hence, “all correct” becomes O.K. in the same vein that N.S.M.G. stands for “‘nuff said ’mong gentlemen.” Even more amusing are fraudulent scholarly attempts to pass “okay” off as derivative of foreignisms ranging from French to Finnish and even Scots dialect (“Och aye,” or, “oh, yes”). More serious is the way event-driven phrases latch on as historical shorthand: “9/11,” for instance, recasts “Ground Zero,” a nearly forgotten technical reference to the point of a nuclear detonation, into a site of unspeakable horror. Also notable is the growing impact of computer analysis on word origins. Shakespeare, for example, is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with inventing more than 1,000 English words since legitimized by common usage; recent scanning of earlier texts reveals, however, that the Bard may often have taken preexisting but little-used words and put them solidly on the map within the memorable contexts of his works.
Farewell soccer moms, hello women of cover.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-13006-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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