|k| clippings: 2014-11-18 — hooked on phonics

Reading today’s WORK made me think of the poet Jack Spicer’s last words, “my vocabulary did this to me.” Whatever it does, language does to each of us in its own way.

WORK

Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul—it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there’s a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don’t know, and that’s what God is. It’s what you don’t know—the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar…

—Margaret Atwood
—from The Year of the Flood

WORD(S)

ganch (gaunch). verb or noun. To impale a person on sharp hooks or stakes or the apparatus used for such an execution. Also used to refer to the wounds made by a boar’s tusks. From Turkish kancalamak (put on a hook), a modification of Greek gampsos (curved).

“Scorch their tender Parts with Fires, and rake their Bowels with Spikes and Gaunches.” (John Scott in The Christian Life)

“Being ganched by a boar’s tusks, he died in the bloom of his youth.” (Robert Ainsworth)

“…thou villain, what horrible impiety art thou committing! what, ravishing the wife of my bosom!—Take him away; ganch him, impale him, rid the world of such a monster!” (John Dryden)

WEB

1. Watching these “Cardistry Wizards” manipulating decks of cards is mesmerizing.

2. “Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction Novels”. The one that sticks in my mind isn’t on the list. From 1984: “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

3. The Segregation Portfolio revisits Gordon Parks’ photo series on segregation, following one southern family in 1956. The photographs are still amazingly powerful. Interestingly, the accompanying story notes that Life magazine, which commissioned the pictures, later paid the family $25,000 to relocate after they were harrassed following publication of the pictures.

4. In the first English translation of the first edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the stories are 🔊 (Even More) Dark And Harrowing". Via Reader S.

5. Today in 1939, poet/novelist/critic/essayist Margaret Atwood is born. Atwood’s work runs the gamut from feminist literary fiction to speculative fiction and from scholarly criticism to children’s books…with a bit of everything in between. My favorites are her prose poems/flash fictions, such as those in Murder in the Dark and her “Maddaddam” trilogy, an intense, literary sci-fi (of a sort). Watch ► a brief interview with Atwood about the Maddaddam books and her ► musings on the creative process.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G. questions the madness: “Does art cause madness or cure it? For me it is the cure and life or (most especially imagined life) is the cause. ¶ Great survivor library reference and I’m even enjoying your words for the day.” — Curiously(?), I think WORD(S) is the most popular section of the newsletter by a large margin…

• Reader S. writes, re: the “too much ‘humor’ comment”: “Bring it!” Reader T. also writes: “Too much humor? Hmm. What an odd complaint!”

• Reader B. asks: “Mmm, Delany. ¶ Did you see D. referenced here: http://ktxc.to/gibson-6-favorite-books?” — Nope…but good link. Gibson’s new one is on my Kindle, just waiting for me.

• A different Reader B. shares a picture of his own nigiri basami scissors (as discussed in the story of Osami Mizuike)

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