Items related to Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our...
Synopsis
"What on earth does lagniappe mean? A sluggard who lies around till noon? A she-wolf of Anapurna? A car that demands heavy pampering?" In fact, none of the above. But one can find this Creole French word delectably defined in THE DISHEVELED DICTIONARY, which does for vocabulary what Gordon's cult classic THE WELL-TEMPERED SENTENCE did for punctuation and THE TRANSITIVE VAMPIRE did for grammar. THE DISHEVELED DICTIONARY takes a voluptuary's approach to language, offering a lavish feast of words and their multiple uses. Favorite characters from Gordon's earlier books appear in cameo, including Yolanta, Jonquil Mapp, cowboys with lingerie, and assorted royal riffraff. With her trademark cache of illustrations and flamboyantly gothic examples, Gordon takes readers on a hedonist's tour of the world of words, where they can check into the Last Judgment Pinball Machine Motel, slip into susurrant silk pajamas at Cafe Frangipane, or plunge into scenes from such literary works as Torpor in the Swing,The Wretch of Lugubria, and Gossamer and the Green Light. Laced with erudite insights and eccentric wit, THE DISHEVELED DICTIONARY is about the music of speech and the sound and sensuality of language, celebrating not only the obsure but also our most beloved and basic words.
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Review
Pretty little novelty vocabulary books often provide unimaginative, unpoetic definitions for strange and beautiful words that one could never imagine actually using in a sentence. Karen Elizabeth Gordon's Disheveled Dictionary is quite the opposite. Gordon offers up usable if somewhat underused words (such as "amplitude," "crepuscular," "maudlin," and "recidivistic"), many of which we're not quite sure we know the exact meaning, illustrating them in the wildly creative fashion that she has perfected in her grammar texts (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, The New Well-Tempered Sentence, and Torn Wings and Faux Pas). "The more ample one's lexicon," writes Gordon (as her alter ego "Yolanta") in the book's preface, "the more supple one's thought, the more daring, charged, engaged." "Jonquil Mapp," another of Gordon's stable of crafty characters, adds that "What's most exciting ... is not where a word has been but where it's going, what you will make of it."
This book is best described by example, so here is Gordon's illustrative use of that excessive pride or self-confidence we call "hubris": " Adipose Rex, a modern drama with ancient Greek overtones, is about a king whose hubris vis-a-vis his heart and his tragic proclivity for tiropitas, pastitsio, and baklava bring on his comeuppance coronary." --Jane Steinberg
About the Author
Karen Elizabeth Gordon is the author of the classic and comic reference books The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, The New Well-Tempered Sentence, and Torn Wings and Faux Pas. Her wanderlusting fiction includes The Ravenous Muse, The Red Shoes and Other Tattered Tales, and Paris Out of Hand. She lives in Berkeley, California and Paris.
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