Hungover in Hampstead

Well, that's been an odd week. I actually got up to number 4 on the Amazon bestseller list. This has involved ale passion (the old word for hangover). So, just a reminder to any Londoners that I'm doing a talk at West End Books in West Hampstead tonight at 7:30.

I think you need to contact them first. Just to give them an idea of numbers.

Today's Today

I was on the Today Programme this morning talking about The Elements of Eloquence with Evan Davis and the lovely Camilla Long. You can listen to it by clicking upon this link.

Incidentally, the post title is an example of both polyptoton and epizeuxis, which are thoroughly explained in the book.

The Elements of Eloquence is Here

Go, litel book.

The Elements of Eloquence is officially released in Britain today. Would you like to read it? No? Oh. Well, if you change your mind, dear reader, there is a widget just to the right. Do you see it? The lovely green and gold cover. Click on that and you can read the first 34 pages for nothing. Then, if you think page 35 worth it, you can dash out the door and run whooping to the nearest bookshop and get yourself a copy of the real thing in all its hardbound glory.

Or, if the notion of running to the bookshop is too much for you, you can simply sit at your computer, sherry in one hand and mouse in the other, and order it from there people:

Amazon
Blackwells
The Book Depository
Foyles
Waterstones

Or, if you're a rugged traditionalist, you can confront me face to face, look me in the eye with one of your commanding stares, and tell me to give you a copy right now and sign it too. I'll probably capitulate, being a capitulatory sort of chap. The way to do this is to come along to one of these places:

West End Lane books in London on 14th of November
Taunton Literary Festival on 18th of November
The Hungerford Bookshop on 19th of November
Barter Books in Alnwick on 25th of November
The Edinburgh Bookshop on 26th of November
Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye on the 27th of November
Booka Bookshop in Oswestry on 28th of November
Blackwells Oxford on 9th of December
Steyning Bookshop in West Sussex on 10th of December
Warwick Books on 11th of December

Or you can just come to the launch party in London on the 12th. But to do that you have to enter a raffle. You do this using the widget below. I think. I'm new to all this, you understand. You give them your name and at midnight on Monday it's picked out of an electronic hat. Something like that anyway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And finally, if you're still wondering what it's all about, here's a silly chap with a silly voice to explain.


Do you see the tankards on the window-sill? They're antique.

Oh, and there'll be an interview with me in The Sunday Times, this Sunday, I think.

Good, Best, Well

A while ago I wrote a little post about the verb go and its past participle went. I go. I went. I have gone. It looks like a highly irregular verb, but it's not. It's two different verbs - wend and go - that have been forced together. There's an even more complex and more common example.

There used to be a word boot. It meant profit, use, advantage. It could be a verb:

What boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade?

Or it could be an adjective:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries...

It's not that Shakespeare's cries lacked footwear, it's just that they were profitless, useless and brought no advantage.

Anyway, the comparative of boot the adjective was bettra (more advantageous) and the superlative was betst (most advantageous/useful etc). Do you see where this is going?

Meanwhile, there was the Old English word gōd (which had nothing to do with the word god). It meant... well it meant good. And now we spell it good. It meant virtuous or valid or desirable.

Meanwhile, there was another Old English word: will. It meant to desire or want. When things turned out as you had willed them, they turned out well.

So now English has a thoroughly weird looking adjective: good, better, best; with the adverb well. We call it irregular, but in a way it's not. It's just three different words that all meant roughly the same thing. Some day, a thousand years from now it may be cool, finer, ok. And people may say to themselves 'That's strange. I wonder how it goed from one to the other."

In other news, I shall be giving a talk in Abingdon tomorrow. More information here. If you're around, do come along. And, did I mention that The Elements of Eloquence will be in the shops on Thursday?

Nearly here.

Trailers First

When people put the cart before the horse, that's preposterous, or, more precisely pre-post-erous. It's upside down and vice versa and, peculiarly, head over heels (which is a strange re-ordering of the original heels over head).

But why do movie trailers not trail after the film? Why do they trail first?

Well, this article seems to have the answer. They used to come after the film. It's the old trick of the series. At the end of one episode you have a trailer for the next one. Here is the cliffhanger, and here the promise of resolution. Here's a description of how it worked in 1912:

One of the concessions hung up a white sheet and showed the serial "The Adventures of Kathlyn." At the end of the reel Kathlyn was thrown in the lion's den. After this "trailed" a piece of film asking Does she escape the lion's pit? See next week's thrilling chapter! Hence, the word "trailer," an advertisement for a coming picture.

But before and after became blurred. Cinemas would show a film, then the trailers, then another film, then the trailers, then another film. So whether you considered them to be before or after simply depended on when you happened to wander into the cinema.

The Night Before Halloween

Just a link to a map of the USA with the various terms for "the night before Halloween". I never knew that there were any terms for it.

Gone, In My Fashion

I took a stroll this morning to survey the scene of waste and desolation that was once London. The lush forests of Exmouth Market are no more. There was even a bin blown over. Yet amid all this I kept thinking about the connection between Cole Porter and "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Let us start with Cole Porter and his song Always True To You (In My Fashion). It's a funny song about a girl who will sleep with any rich man, and yet assures her boyfriend that she is always sort of true to him in her fashion. A typical verse goes:

There's an oil man known as Tex
Who is keen to give me checks,
And his checks, I fear, mean that sex is here to stay!
But I'm always true to you, darlin', in my fashion,
Yes, I'm always true to you, darlin', in my way.

Those last two lines end each verse. Where did Cole Porter get this idea? There was an 1890s poet called Ernest Dowson, who wrote a much sadder and more serious poem called Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae*. In it he describes spending a night with a prostitute in order to try and forget the girl he loves who has left him. Here are the first two verses:

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
    Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
    When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Cole Porter's song is essentially a parody of this poem. Poor Dowson! Dead at 33. His most famous line "The days of wine and roses" is best known as the title of a 1962 film. And his sad refrain is best known as a jolly comedy.

But how does this relate to the windswept remains of London? Well, here's the second half of the poem. I shall simply put the relevant words in bold.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
    Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

 

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
    Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion

Ernest Dowson also invented the word soccer.

The end is upon us.

*Since you ask, this is a line from Horace. It means I am not what I was in the reign of good Cynara, and the context is that he's too old for love. Cynara is some ex-girlfriend. Mind you, cynara is also Greek for artichoke. So it may be about fruit and veg.