Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.03.11
Dear friends,
I did NOT get COVID last month! Whew. I did, however, do a bunch of prophylactic comfort reading, including a few of the novels of Susan Scarlett, the pen name of Noel Streatfeild. One of her novels, Pirouette, is available to borrow through the Internet Archive, and is one of those plots that kind of make you shake your head today, like, okay, sure, you can't get married and be a prima ballerina because you're so good that the man who swears up and down he wants to marry you ... can't deal with being the husband of a star? Insert eye-roll here. Anyway, it's still worth reading because of a really lovely sympathetic father/husband figure and for the subplot of the best friend who realizes that her dreams won't come true.
If you just want a giant treasury of vintage plots (so many misdelivered telegrams! So many coincidences! So much racism!) you can check out Plotto, "A New Method of Plot Suggestion for Writers of Creative Fiction", by William Wallace Cook, circa 1928. It is fascinating, if somewhat exhausting.
Plots become old and worn-out, no longer fit for use, and so do metaphors. Although metaphors don't really get thrown out, they just become language. Anyway, here's Amy Lowell on this:
Take the word "daybreak", for instance. What a remarkable picture it must once have conjured up! The great, round sun, like the yolk of some mighty egg, BREAKING through cracked and splintered clouds. But we have said "daybreak" so often that we do not see the picture any more, it has become only another word for dawn. The poet must be constantly seeking new pictures to make his readers feel the vitality of his thought.
Hop to it, poets, we're waiting.
Cuil theory: "6 Cuils: You ask me for a hamburger. My attempt to reciprocate is cut brutally short as my body experiences a sudden lack of electrons."
I really wanted to understand Lyndon words but this is one of those Wikipedia articles where all the individual terms are used in contexts that are not the same contexts in which I learned them, making the entire thing incomprehensible (to me, I'm sure other people have no trouble, perhaps you're one of those blithe souls?).
This word, however, is great: https://www.wordnik.com/words/perscrutation
Blogging is supposedly making a comeback, so I'm blogging about sewing again.
For those of you in (most of) the US, it's daylight saving time tomorrow.
Also, I'm absolutely stealing (with credit) this from the excellent University of Winds newsletter: here's a link from a previous March 11 Things Learned. Do with it as you will: Potoooooooo is pronounced 'potatoes'.
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin