Alphabet Juice [Hardcover]

 

 

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Normally, when I encounter a book whose subtitle consists of 32 words, I am reluctant to read it but that was not true of Alphabet Juice because I have read most of Roy Blount Jr.'s 20 previously published books and many of his articles. Accompanying Blount on any of his literary escapades always suggests to me what it would be like to be part of an exploration group co-led by Huckleberry Finn and Bill Bryson. That was especially true as I began to read Alphabet Juice in which Blount delivers everything promised in the book's 32-word subtitle. The material is organized within the framework of the alphabet as he wanders through hundreds of words and phrases, sharing his thoughts about them and anything he associates with them. True to form, in what presumably is his introduction, he immediately discusses the relationship between a word and its meaning, cites Steven Pinker's observation that pigs go "oink oink" in English and "chrjo chrjo" in Russian, adds his own observation that baby chicks go "peep peep" in English and "piyo piyo" in Japanese, and shifts his attention to various mispronunciations and mispronunciations of other words.

With regard to the book's title, Blount explains that "Alphabet Juice is my glossographia. Juice as in au jus, juju, power, electricity. (Loose words and clauses left lying around are like loose live wires - they'll short-circuit, burn out, disempower your lights.)" Then he shifts his attention to "a woman walking down the street wearing some highly low-cut shorts," adds a "Note" about the use of boldface and explains abbreviations of reference books frequently used before entering A, the first of 26 stops during his journey of exploration throughout a world inhabited by "the energies, gists, and spirits of letters, words, and combinations thereof; their roots, bones, innards, piths, pips, and secret parts, tinctures, tonics, and essences; with examples, of their usage foul and savory."

Here is Dallas, we have a Farmer's Market near downtown at which some of the merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples. In the same spirit, I now offer a few brief excerpts from Blount's book to suggest the thrust of his thinking and the "flavor" of his writing style.

Examples of figures of speech "which so far as I know have not yet been used in literature" (Page 100):

"I feel like a hog starin' at a wristwatch."
"She ran home so fast you could play dice on the tail of her coat."
"Tea so strong you could trot a mouse on it."
"Quiet as a mosquito doing push-ups on a lemon meringue pie."
"He looked like he'd been sortin' wildcats."
"Quick as a hiccup."

"If you had never seen the word [onomatopoeia] before, you wouldn't suspect, from the sound of it, that it means what it means. Nor would you from its etymology: it comes from the Greek for `coining names,' not from the Greek for `sounding like it means.' And if I were the commissioner of spelling I would drop the o after the p: this word looks plenty Greek enough without clinging to a poe pronounced pee." (Page 221)

"Here's a word [qualm], like terrific, from which much of the force has been leached, by usage influenced by sound. According to Chambers [i.e. the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology], qualm comes from the Old High German for `death and destruction,' then the Middle English for `pestilence, plague.' It has come to mean no more than a sudden uneasiness, perhaps a bit of nausea, or just, by extension into abstract, a misgiving. That's what it sounds like it ought to mean." (Page 244)

With regard to the split infinitive, "There was a time, in the nineteenth century, when persnickety grammarians categorically deplored putting anything between the to and the verb. These days, no one condemns `to boldly go where none have gone before,' whose rhythm is catchy, or "The bishop has resolved to painstakingly separate the men from the boys.' But it is wise to rigorously keep an eye on the infinitive as a unit." (Page 281)

The word zafti means "plump in a good way; with a well-rounded figure; full-bodiedly curvy. But it comes from the Yiddish zaftik, juicy, succulent. Same root, way back, as in sap, the juice in a tree." (Page 361)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it and Blount's previously published Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South and About Three Bricks Shy: And The Load Filled Up as well as Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature and The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, John McWhorter `s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English, and Henry Hitchings' The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English. A careful reading of these books will serve as an excellent preparation Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass.

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