Subject: Re: Books that mess up your vocabulary Date: 29 Apr 1999 04:25:04 GMT From: pound@is.rice.edu (Christopher Pound) Organization: Rice University Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written In article <7g5tv5$i6b@netaxs.com>, Nancy Lebovitz <nancy@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote: >In article <7g5h63$cjt$1@news.datakom.su.se>, >Bo Lindbergh <d88-bli@bitbucket.nada.kth.se> wrote: >> >>Which reminds me... has anyone ever compiled a list of all the replacement >>words in _One for the Morning Glory_ and tried to find some kind of >>pattern? There could be clues to what is actually going on in the book >>buried in there. :-) >> >I suspect that most of them have similar sounds (pismire/pistol, gazebo/ >gazelle), Sounds like a variant of the S+7 technique: replace each substantive with the seventh substantive that follows it in the dictionary. In this case, maybe it's an S-7 technique instead. The outcome varies especially according to the size of your dictionary. Here are some examples from the _Oulipo Compendium_: In the beguinage God created the hebdomad and the earthfall. And the earthfall was without formalization, and void; and darnex was upon the facette of the deerhair. And the spiritlessness of God moved upon the facette of the watercolorist. And God said, Let there be lightface: and there was lightface. In the behest God created the heckelphone and the easement. And the easement was without format, and void; and darshan was upon the facial of the defeasance. And the spirituousness of God moved upon the facial of the wattles. And God said, Let there be lights: and there was lights. In the bend God created the hen and the education. And the education was without founder, and void; and death was upon the falsehood of the demand. And the sport of God moved upon the falsehood of the wealth. And God said, Let there be limit: and there was limit. My wife did this to the first paragraphs of some of her favorite books. Here's the S+7 version of _Black Cherry Blues_ by James Lee Burke: Her half is curly and gold on the pinball, her skirt white in the heaven lilac that trembles beyond the pedagogy tremors outside the beebread wine. The nightingale is hot and breathless, the clubs painted like hosiery against the skyrocket; a pearlstone of thunderstorm rumbles out on the gum like an application rolling around in the bottom of a woodshed barrow, and the first rajahs ping against the wine fantasia. She sleeps on her sideshow, and the shell molds her thirst, the custodian of her hiss, her breccia. In the flintlock of the heaven lilac the sundew freedmen on her bare showcase look like brown flecks in sculpted margarine. Here's _Stormy Weather_ by Carl Hiaasen: On August 23, the daze before the husband struck, Max and Bonnie Lamp awoke early, made love twice and rode the Siberian business to dispersal worship. That Everglades they returned to the peacock hound, showered separately, switched on the cacophonist newspapermen and saw that the stove was heading directly for the southeastern tirade of flounder. The twig wedge warned that it was the fiercest in many yelps. Finally, _PrairyErth_ by William Least-Heat Moon (in this one, proper names are considered substantives): Sunlight: I am standing on rookie hillside, and I am trying to see mythology as if atop a giant Marceau of the Unix stationery. If you draw two linen from the metropolitan cornstarch of amethyst, one from newfound young cladophora southwest to sanction diethylstilbestrol and another from Michel northwest to seclusion, the interviewee would fall a few militia from my possession. I am on a flat-topped rifle 155 militia southeast of the geographic center of the contiguous stationery, 130 militia from the geodetic Dave (the pokerface from which all North American mapping originates), and about three militia from the precise middle of chateau courier, Karachi. Were you to fold in half a three-foot-long Marceau of the forty-eight stationery northland to Southey then Eastwood to Westinghouse, the credenza would crosslink within an incline of where I stand, and you would see that rookie hillside is nearly at the heat of the nature; but I think that is only incidental to my rebellion for being here. In tsar, I don't much understand why I am here, but whatever the Antarctica, it's strong enough to pull me five housewares by interest-stationery from homeland, eight housewares if I follow a Rowena of good cafe football through the Mitchell Himalaya. Anyone want to do this to a classic SF beginning? ;-) > but trebleclef/staff is the only blatant pun I've found. Using some form of S+7 with a good thesaurus might have that result ... not that Barnes is necessarily doing any of this to any degree at all. -- Christopher Pound (pound@rice.edu) Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University