Some words aren't in the dictionary, and others are bent
Aug 14, 2019 14:27:52 GMT -5
Jenny, nkown, and 3 more like this
Post by Jeff on Aug 14, 2019 14:27:52 GMT -5
Near the end of the first page of text in TTOTC (Preface p.4) is the paragraph:
I tend to use some words that aren't in the dictionary, and others that are, I bend a little. My only goal in this endeavor is to talk about a few of my life experiences and if any readers over the age of twelve don't see a little of themselves in this mirror, then maybe they deserve another turn.
Might these be instructions as to how to play the game, or at least a portion of the game?
What words does the author use in TTOTC that are not in the dictionary? There are certainly some words the book that are not common usage today (e.g. "biddies," "banco," and "articulacy"). But words that actually are not in the dictionary are, to my imperfect assessment, astonishingly rare given that statement.
- Sniffering (Important Literature p.12)
- Man-trail (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.62)
- Book of Days (Gold and More p.129)
- Flutterby (Epilogue p.147)
Related to this idea, there is also the deliberate spelling error "knowlege" (Dancing with the Millennium p.138) in the text and on one of the two pictured bells with that word.
Did you find other unconventional or misspelled words in TTOTC that I missed? Even if seemingly not generally true, the statement does fit into a general notion of nonconformity that the author develops within TTOTC.
The next portion of that first sentence tells us that he "bends" words. In contrast to the previous portion of this sentence, which is marginally true, this latter part is most certainly true.
What about the second sentence? Taken at face value, the first and second sentences are seemingly unconnected thoughts, which is a curious arrangement for sentences sharing a paragraph. However, the first sentence's "bend" is conceptually related to the second sentence's "mirror" and "turn." Could that be the purpose? If so and if these are instructions...well that's a lot of ifs.
Below are my notes of word bending in TTOTC, omitting the Gold and More poem and most of the ubiquitous irony. Following that list is a list of bent quotes. Did you find other word/quote bending in TTOTC that I missed?
Bent words
> Not addressed in TTOTC per se, but the homonyms "forest" / "Forrest" and "fen" / "Fenn" which leads to the oxymoron "forest fen".
> The paraprosdokian "tyke and Wimpy...hamburgers" (Preface p.4).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Well, I'm almost eighty and I think that's so funny. Oh, I don't mean funny because I'm almost eighty, but it's funny because I said it that way" (Preface p.6).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He was funny like that. Oh, I don't mean he was funny because he said he said he was going to die, but funny because he had all the figured out" (Preface p.6).
> The paraprosdokian "surprise birthday party because he was surprised he lived that long" (Preface p.7).
> The paraprosdokian "he was married five times, and he said he always married housekeepers because when he divorced they kept the house" (Preface p.7)
> The aptronym "borderline biddies," as the biddies were in line at Borders (Important Literature p.11).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He even had a sister like mine, the guy in the story I mean, not JD" (Important Literature p.13).
> The oxymoron "unauthorized autobiography" (Important Literature p.13).
> The variant synophone of the "kid" that had Fenn pondering his "kismet," or fate, was his kidney cancer (Important Literature p.13). Supporting this idea, in a later chapter Fenn laments that after his cancer diagnosis "everything I thought about radiated an aura of misfortune" but "then one night, after the probability of my fate had finally hit bottom, I got an idea" (Gold and More p.129).
> The syntactic ambiguity "The story was about this poet in Baghdad who was always picking some guy's pocket, and he was in trouble most of the time, the pick-pocket guy I mean" (Important Literature p.13-4).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge," and I had a lot of that, imagination I mean" (Important Literature p.14)
> The neogram "cheap, one-pony show" (First Grade p.17) appears to be a combination of the idioms "cheap trick," "dog and pony show," and "one-trick pony."
> The pun and neogram "wouldn't bite a hard biscuit if she was starving to death" (First Grade p.17) from a combination of idioms "bite the biscuit" and "starving to death."
> The syntactic ambiguity "Well, I didn't have a clue about what we'd learned, but was praying thanks to Thor because he was holding my hand and smiling. My father I mean" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.25-6).
> The variant oronym of "Miss F or D" for Fenn’s school teacher "Miss Ford" . This makes perfect sense in the context of Fenn's prayer "for D's" and his "failing classroom grades" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.26). [credit: read this from user LeonardoDecapitated on Mysterious Writings]
> The paraprosdokian "tyke and Wimpy...hamburgers" (Preface p.4).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Well, I'm almost eighty and I think that's so funny. Oh, I don't mean funny because I'm almost eighty, but it's funny because I said it that way" (Preface p.6).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He was funny like that. Oh, I don't mean he was funny because he said he said he was going to die, but funny because he had all the figured out" (Preface p.6).
> The paraprosdokian "surprise birthday party because he was surprised he lived that long" (Preface p.7).
> The paraprosdokian "he was married five times, and he said he always married housekeepers because when he divorced they kept the house" (Preface p.7)
> The aptronym "borderline biddies," as the biddies were in line at Borders (Important Literature p.11).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He even had a sister like mine, the guy in the story I mean, not JD" (Important Literature p.13).
> The oxymoron "unauthorized autobiography" (Important Literature p.13).
> The variant synophone of the "kid" that had Fenn pondering his "kismet," or fate, was his kidney cancer (Important Literature p.13). Supporting this idea, in a later chapter Fenn laments that after his cancer diagnosis "everything I thought about radiated an aura of misfortune" but "then one night, after the probability of my fate had finally hit bottom, I got an idea" (Gold and More p.129).
> The syntactic ambiguity "The story was about this poet in Baghdad who was always picking some guy's pocket, and he was in trouble most of the time, the pick-pocket guy I mean" (Important Literature p.13-4).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge," and I had a lot of that, imagination I mean" (Important Literature p.14)
> The neogram "cheap, one-pony show" (First Grade p.17) appears to be a combination of the idioms "cheap trick," "dog and pony show," and "one-trick pony."
> The pun and neogram "wouldn't bite a hard biscuit if she was starving to death" (First Grade p.17) from a combination of idioms "bite the biscuit" and "starving to death."
> The syntactic ambiguity "Well, I didn't have a clue about what we'd learned, but was praying thanks to Thor because he was holding my hand and smiling. My father I mean" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.25-6).
> The variant oronym of "Miss F or D" for Fenn’s school teacher "Miss Ford" . This makes perfect sense in the context of Fenn's prayer "for D's" and his "failing classroom grades" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.26). [credit: read this from user LeonardoDecapitated on Mysterious Writings]
> The tautology "The greater part of knowledge is knowing those things not worthy of knowing" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.26).
> Less convincingly, the near-homophony of his teacher "Ford" being described as at least "forty" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.24).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Fortunately, I was the only one in the class who knew that trick, the sliding I mean" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.27).
> The pun in the radio show "Your Hit Parade" one of the two stories in which Fenn receives a literal spanking (not to mention the series of figurative spankings he receives throughout TTOTC) (Surviving Myself p.40).
> The syntactic ambiguity "When my mother told me I'd been fired I just stood there while the sun went behind a cloud. It killed me for sure, getting fired I mean" (The Totem Cafe Caper p.47).
> The syntactic ambiguity "when the owner gave Frosty an inch he thought he'd become a ruler, Frosty I mean." (The Totem Cafe Caper p.48).
> The pun involving "the owner gave Frosty an inch he thought he'd become a ruler" (The Totem Cafe Caper p.48).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He even compared my intelligence unfavorably with that of the two of us, the horse I mean." (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.61).
> The tautology "if we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going," a variant of a joke by the comedian Professor Irwin Corey (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.62).
> Looking for Lewis and Clark's broad situational irony with the idiom "take up the reins." The idiom means to take control of a situation and the situation was not controlled until the protagonists "loosened our grip on the reins and the horses took us to a dirt road" (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.63).
> The mondegreen "buffalo bull" for "Buffalo Bill," in light of the bison’s stated nickname "Cody" and hence overt reference to the cowboy William Frederick Cody / Buffalo Bill (Buffalo Cowboys p.65).
> The alliteration "big buffalo bulls" (Buffalo Cowboys p.65).
> Buffalo Cowboy's broad situational irony with the idiom "take the bull by the horns." The idiom means to effectively deal with a difficult situation and the situation was not in their control as "bulls are easier to grab hold of than they are to turn loose of" (Buffalo Cowboys p.66).
> The pun with "tenacity" being a "shortcoming" (My War for Me p.73).
> The near homonym "Jeans" for Fenn’s wife Peggy Jean from the story where Fenn metaphorically returns to his actual family after retiring from the Air Force (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.105). Unsubstantiated but by extension, "Hush Puppies" could refer to Fenn's two daughters that are discussed in that chapter.
> The pun "Hush Puppies" refers to the dead dog in that story's Gilbert Gaul painting (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.106). [credit: read this from user Zaphod on Mysterious Writings]
> The multiple puns with Gaul. The painter’s surname "Gaul" in is possibly a homonym for the geographic "Gaul" (the story's "French watercolor") and homophones for "gall" as in bile (the painting was sold to him by an art dealer from Amarillo; "amarillo" means "yellow" in Spanish, a color often associated with bile) and "gall" as in boldness (the painting was bought with a loan) (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.105-6).
> The variant synophone "Gaul" (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.106) for the Gallatin National Forest, the location of the adventure in Looking for Lewis and Clark (p.60). These two chapters are connected through the shared themes of hands-on education and the educational value of failure (as Looking for Lewis and Clark's consecutive chapter Buffalo Cowboys is with Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again's consecutive chapter Teachers with Ropes, except through a shared object of a lasso/rope rather than with that shared variant synophone).
> The anagram "goal" from "Olga" (Tea with Olga p.115). The moral of Tea with Olga is that positively affecting other people’s lives is our most important purpose, as stated explicitly in a previous chapter: "we are all here only for the pleasure of others…[to] enrich those with whom [we] interact with each day and cause them to be better for my having passed their view" (My War for Me p.102-3).
> The pun "banco" in the context of the monetary theme of the chapter and the preceding one (Father on the Banco p.119).
> The tautology "every time we've come to a fork in the road we've taken it together" is a variant of a saying often ascribed to Yogi Berra (Flywater p.121).
> The Spoonerism "flutterby" (Epilogue p.147).
> Less convincingly, the near-homophony of his teacher "Ford" being described as at least "forty" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.24).
> The syntactic ambiguity "Fortunately, I was the only one in the class who knew that trick, the sliding I mean" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.27).
> The pun in the radio show "Your Hit Parade" one of the two stories in which Fenn receives a literal spanking (not to mention the series of figurative spankings he receives throughout TTOTC) (Surviving Myself p.40).
> The syntactic ambiguity "When my mother told me I'd been fired I just stood there while the sun went behind a cloud. It killed me for sure, getting fired I mean" (The Totem Cafe Caper p.47).
> The syntactic ambiguity "when the owner gave Frosty an inch he thought he'd become a ruler, Frosty I mean." (The Totem Cafe Caper p.48).
> The pun involving "the owner gave Frosty an inch he thought he'd become a ruler" (The Totem Cafe Caper p.48).
> The syntactic ambiguity "He even compared my intelligence unfavorably with that of the two of us, the horse I mean." (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.61).
> The tautology "if we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going," a variant of a joke by the comedian Professor Irwin Corey (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.62).
> Looking for Lewis and Clark's broad situational irony with the idiom "take up the reins." The idiom means to take control of a situation and the situation was not controlled until the protagonists "loosened our grip on the reins and the horses took us to a dirt road" (Looking for Lewis and Clark p.63).
> The mondegreen "buffalo bull" for "Buffalo Bill," in light of the bison’s stated nickname "Cody" and hence overt reference to the cowboy William Frederick Cody / Buffalo Bill (Buffalo Cowboys p.65).
> The alliteration "big buffalo bulls" (Buffalo Cowboys p.65).
> Buffalo Cowboy's broad situational irony with the idiom "take the bull by the horns." The idiom means to effectively deal with a difficult situation and the situation was not in their control as "bulls are easier to grab hold of than they are to turn loose of" (Buffalo Cowboys p.66).
> The pun with "tenacity" being a "shortcoming" (My War for Me p.73).
> The near homonym "Jeans" for Fenn’s wife Peggy Jean from the story where Fenn metaphorically returns to his actual family after retiring from the Air Force (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.105). Unsubstantiated but by extension, "Hush Puppies" could refer to Fenn's two daughters that are discussed in that chapter.
> The pun "Hush Puppies" refers to the dead dog in that story's Gilbert Gaul painting (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.106). [credit: read this from user Zaphod on Mysterious Writings]
> The multiple puns with Gaul. The painter’s surname "Gaul" in is possibly a homonym for the geographic "Gaul" (the story's "French watercolor") and homophones for "gall" as in bile (the painting was sold to him by an art dealer from Amarillo; "amarillo" means "yellow" in Spanish, a color often associated with bile) and "gall" as in boldness (the painting was bought with a loan) (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.105-6).
> The variant synophone "Gaul" (Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again p.106) for the Gallatin National Forest, the location of the adventure in Looking for Lewis and Clark (p.60). These two chapters are connected through the shared themes of hands-on education and the educational value of failure (as Looking for Lewis and Clark's consecutive chapter Buffalo Cowboys is with Blue Jeans and Hush Puppies Again's consecutive chapter Teachers with Ropes, except through a shared object of a lasso/rope rather than with that shared variant synophone).
> The anagram "goal" from "Olga" (Tea with Olga p.115). The moral of Tea with Olga is that positively affecting other people’s lives is our most important purpose, as stated explicitly in a previous chapter: "we are all here only for the pleasure of others…[to] enrich those with whom [we] interact with each day and cause them to be better for my having passed their view" (My War for Me p.102-3).
> The pun "banco" in the context of the monetary theme of the chapter and the preceding one (Father on the Banco p.119).
> The tautology "every time we've come to a fork in the road we've taken it together" is a variant of a saying often ascribed to Yogi Berra (Flywater p.121).
> The Spoonerism "flutterby" (Epilogue p.147).
Bent Quotes
> "Life is a game of poker, happiness is the pot. Fate deals you four cards and a joker, and you play whether you like it or not" (Preface p.5) varies from "Life is only a game of poker and happiness is the pot, fate deals you five cards in the cradle and you play whether you like it or not" (Jack Yellen and Abe Olman song I'm Waiting for Ships That Never Come In).
> "I remember the same thing happened to President Eisenhower and he explained it was because his brains were pushing his hair out" (Preface p.6). A variation of this saying appears to be best attributed to a different politician, Silvio Berlusconi: "I have little hair because my brain is so big it pushes the hair out."
> "Occasionally it's wise for the fox to dress like the hound" (Preface p.7) is likely a muddling of the adage "run with the hare and hunt with the hounds," as the context is Fenn supporting both sides in an argument ("shake my head yes and no at the same time"). A Jack Higgins The Eagle Has Landed quote is closer in wording but perhaps not in meaning ("I realized fear one morning, with the blare of the fox hunter's sound. When they're all chasin' the poor bloody fox, 'tis safer to be dressed like the hound").
> "Maybe it's a respect thing, like the sheriff who told the outlaw he was going to hang him with a new rope because he respected him so much" (Important Literature p.9) bears some resemblance to the idiom "you'd complain if you were hung with a new rope."
> "The story was about this guy who was an ambulance driver in World War I" (Important Literature p.11) is a description not of For Whom the Bell Tolls but rather A Farewell to Arms.
> Not quite in the same vein but "If Robert Redford had ever written anything" (Important Literature p.11); Robert Redford did write a book: The Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time.
> "The greater part of knowledge is knowing those things not worthy of knowing" (Jump-starting the Learning Curve p.26) appears to be a mixture of the Crates quote "one part of knowledge consists of being ignorant of such things as are not worthy to be known" and the Ali ibn Abi Talib quote "do not hate what you do not know, for the greater part of knowledge consists of what you do not know."
> The poem from Evetts Haley to his wife Nita (My War for Me p.75) is a very slight variation of the Nancy Turner poem Courage Has a Crimson Coat.
> "If you should ever think of me when I have passed this vale, and wish to please my ghost, forgive a sinner and smile at a homely girl" (My War for Me p.94) is a variation of H. L. Mencken’s humorous suggestion of what his epitaph might read: "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." It is curious that Fenn has changed “wink your eye” to “smile,” especially given his liberal use of eye imagery within TTOTC.
> "They have their entrances and exits" (My War for Me p.138) should be "exits" first and then "entrances" (Shakespeare As You Like It Act II Scene VII Line 138).
> "God subtracts from the allotted time of man, those hours spent fishing" (Flywater p.125) is a corruption of the proverb "the gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing" which results in a cruel reversal of math for fishermen.
> "My health's good, it's my age that is killing me" (Gold and More p.131) is a variation of a quote best attributed to the singer Roy Acuff, not George Burns: "my health is good; it's my age that's bad."
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