“We were staying in a remote part of Scotland and in the
evenings we read aloud to each other as our entertainment.” So recounts journalist and fiction writer
Annalena McAfee. She’s speaking in a
video interview posted on Amazon, recalling how she began writing her novel,
“The Spoiler.” The kicker is that her
evening reading partner and husband is novelist Ian McEwan. Maybe they read the dictionary together too? Evenings in remote Scotland might drive you
to it.
I read “The Spoiler” this summer and it was a page turner. Aging, former wartime journalist named
“Honor” (one of the “virtue names,” so English) confronts a young and brash
interviewer, a tabloid writer named Tamara. Think Ernest Hemingway’s Martha Gellhorn in
loose slacks meets Rupert Murdoch’s Rebekah Brooks in frizzy red hair.
Nicknamed “the Marlene Dietrich of the newsroom”, Honor lives
in her glamorous past. Her heyday was adventure
journalism, going to dangerous places to “get the story” behind historic events.
The Spanish Civil War to Mao’s Long March.
But now---the 1990s---the trashy tabloids pass for newspapers. A young, brash climber named Tamara gets to interview
Honor by a mistake. Turning an error to
career advantage, the ignorant Tamara instinctively pursues the aging legend. Secrets of a distinguished past emerge. A
bloody last battle in the decade before both worlds of print---serious and
tabloid---succumb to the electronic.
Annalena McAfee’s sentences were a pleasure of clarity and
syntax. But the diction---the
words. At first I thought these were
just British expressions, surely I could easily intuit their meaning from the
context. But as the novel progressed, I
encountered more and more of them.
I was reading on a Kindle, my trusty travel companion. Its electronic screen a fitting page while in
the sky on the way to California. Four
and a half hours to read with no interruptions; a Bombay Sapphire on the credit
card. But a bit tricky to highlight and flick to the e-reader dictionary. A few bumps and bounces over the Rockies could
threaten this fragile set up. Sketchy Delta service can’t be trusted for prompt
replacement of gin. So I took to making a paper list. Here it is:
Otiose, fug, blethering, oleaginous, titivating, gazump
(ed), gawp, mote, boffin, poiumenon, japes, bint, hared about, compère, banjaxed, susurration, poncey, duff,
swots, suppurating, chthonic,
panjandrum, cumbrous, uncumber, oubliette, juju, juddering, gawpers,
deliquescence, shambolic, chomolungma.
High school Latin helped with some of these; ditto college French.
There is a least on biblical term
(mote), and some anthropology (chthonic). But “swot” and “poncy”? Is this public school banter? “Panjandrum”? Are we in Indja with the
Raj?
I am utterly banjaxed.
So what is husband Ian McEwan’s vocabulary like? I hadn’t recalled from the two novels I’d
read long ago, but courtesy of the Kindle, I opened his most recent novel, Sweet Tooth. A month ago I’d breezed
through it without issues, I thought.
Sure enough, out popped: squit, orotund, moue, canting, pargeted, plumminess,
pollarded wood.
Most of my life people have remarked on my vocabulary. The sole offspring of educated and somewhat
intellectual parents, I was the child audience of adult debates that were
better than TV. Especially 50’s TV. Family
friends often commented on my advanced vocabulary. I secretly relished this distinction from
grown-ups. OK. I was pridefully
complicit in appearing to be an amateur prodigy. But I was observant. Quick to
mimic sounds, to move verbally in pace with my elders. Alert to the
significance of context even when not understood.
So with some chagrin---and after decades in academia---I now
find that the real vocabulary grown-ups are the Brits. And they are way beyond me.
Understandably, of course.
They have their own lexicon and turns of phrase. But still, the ones I read are not
obscure. Ian McEwan and Martin Amis
adorn the Anglo-American best-seller lists; younger British aspirants, outside
the snooty class, are worthy too. Here’s
a little list from Harriet Lane’s Alys,
Always: frowsty, cornichons, benison, tetanque, groynes, skirls, knackered,
spliff, lappet, hellebore, pongee, weir.
Now I’ve turned to the New York Times Book Review and The New
Yorker. Staples of educated (but not
erudite) American readers and what do I find? Tinnital, orisons, estivating, clinquant.
In my defense, I should say that I am a good guesser. Some of these words suggest faint
associations just shy of true recognition. But that’s not enough anymore. “The game’s afoot,” as Sherlock would
say. And I am on the hunt. Searching for words. I’ve signed up with “Dictionary.com” for a
daily word fix. Bookmarked the thesaurus. I refuse to be banjaxed. Which, by way of
online Merriam-Webster, means damaged or ruined. The usage is chiefly Irish. Wouldn’t you know. Now if I could just get some attendant to
deliver a gin and tonic.
Read more essays like this in East Village Magazine at http://www.eastvillagemagazine.org/
