Lewis Burke Frumkes

I came across a picture of the original edition of this book maybe 10-12 years ago and becuase the title is so funny, I have been searching infrequently for it ever since. I finally decided to use a Half Price Books giftcard to buy a copy. I got a reprint (more on that at the end*) and now I've read it.

Dave Barry meets Ted Nancy.

Some of these essays/articles are funny. Some less so. More even less so.

But, I've finally read it.

[on elevators telling us "something about the world we live in"]
"They tell you that man is a vertical animal that likes to travel in herds; [...]; that somewhere there exists a building composed of just the thirteenth floors missing from all the others."

[on Making the Inner Circle(of God)]
"The executive [recruiting] committee's job is to increase membership in God's Inner Circle from 50 last year to 120. To do this we have made a deal with God to forgive up to 10 percent of a member's sins, not including food sins. Food sins, as you know, are unforgivable."
{Nailed it. Weird, that no one has modernized the cloven hoof thing to acknowledge that we've handled trichinosis.}

"W. W. Willard, the celebrated author, critic, play-wright, and raconteur, will put his entire vocabulary up for sale next month at the Sotheby Parke Bernet Galleries. Yesterday's announcement of the auction caused a widespread stir among collectors and wordsmiths both here and abroad, and the three-day sale is expected to attract a large attendance.
What the public is bound to find remarkable about the Willard offering is the enormous range and quality of the collection. It is common knowledge that W. W. Willard has assembled one of the largest and most complete idiomatic vocabularies in the English-speaking world, but it may come as a surprise to many that he also possesses the finest set of seventeenth-century French expletives outside the Library of Congress, and a hitherto unknown collection of Tibetan humor words."
{This was clever and rather funny.}

[on The New Punctuation] {The predated emojis by decades but someone ought to take a look at them because these would help. They (whoever "they" are) should make emojis out of these.}


[on being a modern lexicraftologist, as Ambrose Bierce was... I liked this one]
quatressensial, adj. - not quite quintessential

*[on that binding] It sucks. Page after page from the middle on kept pulling out. Disappointed.… (más)

Delightful book. I was looking for another by the author and found this on Open Library. What a joy it must have been to collect all of these!

I love words and love to see what other people love. More than a little surprise at the multiple entries of Poe's "cellar door"! I don't know that I could chose favorites myself, but the last entry in the book came from Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. and I'm adding it to my vocabulary: "retromingent". Look it up. Surprise!

I must find a copy of this for myself.… (más)