|k| clippings: 2014-12-15 — frankly, my dear...

Today’s WORD comes via Reader C., whose attention and correspondence I appreciate. Also, because of the flurry of email regarding mondegreens (of which misheard song lyrics are an example), I’ve temporarily shared the 1954 Harper’s article, “The Death of Lady Mondegreen” by Sylvia Wright, in which she coined the term.

WORK

I was about to give a sharp reply, but paused. She was right, after all. Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air’s damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.

—John Banville
—from The Sea

WORD(S)

gallimaufry. noun. A heterogeneous mixture, a confused jumble, a ridiculous medley. See also: hodgepodge, salmagundi. From Old French calimafree (a stew of carp), further origin unknown.

“She tried to tire herself out by doing all of the exercises she could think of that would not make a lot of noise: push-ups, dips, squats, and a gallimaufry of half-remembered yoga moves.” (Neal Stephenson)

“…my life hadn’t exactly tricked me out with a gallery of amusing pals, only a gallimaufry of grotesques.” (Will Self)

“Now, sobered by the smell of truth, he steps into the receiving room: a dismal parlour, a gloomy gallimaufry of exhausted furniture and jaundiced ornamental crockery and military paraphernalia, lit by oil-lamps despite the sunshine straining to penetrate thick curtains the colour of bacon.” (Michel Faber)

“Pistol: He woos both high and low, both rich and poor,
Both young and old, one with another, Ford;
He loves the gallimaufry: Ford, perpend.” (Shakespeare)

“Servant: Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair; they call themselves saltiers: and they have dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in’t…” (Shakespeare)

WEB

1. A Flappers’ Dictionary…pairs well with a similar, informal dictionary by a writer’s grandmother.

2. Wow, ► Passion Pit on Tiny Desk makes a whole different (and better) kind of music.

3. Antique pop-up anatomy and natural history books.

4. ► CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music should be called “The Science of Sound and Materials Without Special Effects” and it’s mesmerizing.

5. Today in 1939, Gone With the Wind premieres in Atlanta. Contrary to popular belief, there were prior movies that had the word “damn” in them and no one was fined for its use in David O. Selznick’s famous work (in fact, special rules were adopted for Gone With the Wind to ensure that didn’t happen). Olivia De Havilland’s character is the only one portrayed by a major star who dies in the film; De Havilland is the only one of those actors still alive today. Incidentally, the four top-billed actors, including De Havilland, only appear onscreen together in the film once. Gone With the Wind is the longest film ever to win an Oscar as well as the first color film to do so. Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American Oscar nominee and award winner…and she had to convince an angry Clark Gable to attend the ceremony she was, because of segregation, unable to. The studio banked everything on the opening scene of the burning of Atlanta—if it had gone wrong, the film would have been scrapped—but it not only went well, but allowed MGM Studios to get rid of a number of other film set remainders, including the “Great Wall” set from the 1933 film King Kong.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Readers L., Z., and M. wrote in with suggestions for sites about mondegreens and/or misheard lyrics including Am I Right’s mondegreen section, linguistics professor ► Andrew Nevin’s four-part video series on mondegreens with stellar examples from ABBA, Hendrix, Hall & Oates, and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Paul Devlin’s review of The Anthology of Rap, ► Peter Kay’s misheard lyrics comedy video and Jon Carroll’s old San Francisco Gate columns.

• Reader B. still prefers his version of CCR’s lyric, “there’s a baboon on the rise.”

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