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SPREAD THE WORD

The 11th volume of the cunning linguist’s New York Times Magazine “On Language” columns. Safire is more than a witty journalist covering grammar and usage, as his fiction (Sleeper Spy, 1995) and nonfiction (The First Dissident, 1992) attest. The Pulitzer-winning political pundit fuses politics and linguistics when discussing “the need to reject the no-longer-pertinent language of the cold war.” In high-ranking Washington company, Safire hears America’s newly global policies described as “enlargement,” but he prefers the less pathological “engagement.” He wonders whether pundits should call pro-Communist Russians left- or right-wingers. Elsewhere, his research outflanks a writer who deems the term “philistine” insensitive to Palestinians. Most of the book celebrates language for its own sake. Only Safire could contemplate the hole of a doughnut thus: “Where was I? Yes. Where is the toroidal quality in a nut? (Only a few moments ago, you would not have understood that question).” The reader soon confronts holey bagels and Life Savers, as well as a dunk into the etymology of the donut (a legitimate variant, we’re told). Much of the fun of reading Safire’s mail is the many “incorrections,” or inaccurate corrections. With an ear to pronunciation, we learn that some say “PRAH-sess,” while the more logical Brits say “PROH-sess.” Quoting from TV Guide, Roseanne, or Hillary Clinton, Safire champions spoken language and attacks politically correct atrocities, like one that would turn zoos into Wildlife Conservation Parks. Not that Safire is opposed to new coinages. These articles are mad with serious and invented neologisms like “Pun jab” and new definitions, such as “news junkies” as “consumers of junk food for thought.” In 20 years on the language beat, Safire has waged a delightful battle for correct but common English, taking on its petrifaction with such defiant phrases as: “You’d think the Brits invented it.”

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-8129-3253-6

Page Count: 276

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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