December 2005
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I re-read J. P. Marquand's H. M. Pulham, Esquire, which was published in 1940 and was still widely read during the 50s. It's disappointing that the new novel repeats so much of The Late George Apley. Pulham is a mock autobiography, and once again Marquand satirizes social norms by using the device of the dim narrator…
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In a recent post, I conjectured that some Bushlingo malapropisms must have originated when their bookless coiner parroted words that he had heard in speech but had never seen in print. I gave two examples: the meaningless "resignate" for "resonate" and the wildly off-target "commiserate" for "commensurate." Bushlingo offers other examples of such self-betraying approximations.…
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On November 27, writing about Lermontov's A Hero of our Time, I found it offensive that Azamat trades his sister for a horse. I found fault with Lermontov for employing what I judged to be a fraudulent plot device. I've since read Amjad Jaimoukha's The Chechens (2005) where the following appears: "In Ingush society, a…
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My father was a great admirer of the popular American novelist John P. Marquand and I remember that he specifically urged me to read Marquand's best known work, The Late George Apley. Marquand's heyday was in the 1930s and 1940s, and I don't think that he's much read now, although it's good to see that…