… Which sounds very high-flown and nice, of course, but please understand that with this guy it’s not high-flown or abstract. Or nice. In the same emphatic, empirical, dominating way that Lendl drove home his own lesson, Roger Federer is showing that the speed and strength of today’s pro game are merely its skeleton, not its flesh. He has, figuratively and literally, re-embodied men’s tennis, and for the first time in years the game’s future is unpredictable. You should have seen, on the grounds’ outside courts, the variegated ballet that was this year’s Junior Wimbledon. Drop volleys and mixed spins, off-speed serves, gambits planned three shots ahead — all as well as the standard-issue grunts and booming balls. Whether anything like a nascent Federer was here among these juniors can’t be known, of course. Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled.
— 2006
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appoggiatura—embellishment note that’s one note up or down from precedent note appressed—lying flat or pressed closely against something; “his hair appressed from hours in a cap” aquarelle—drawing in transparent watercolor argillaceous—containing or resembling clay arrant (adj.) — completely such, thoroughgoing: “an arrant idiot” art nouveau—decorative style of early 20th c. using leaves and flowers in flowing sinuous lines, like on vases, columns, etc. ashcake—Southern/rural for johnnycake ashlar—a square block of building stone Asmodeus—demon in Tobit book of Bible; “Asmodeus flight” in Lesage’s Le Diable boiteux, Asmodeus takes Don Cléo fas to steeple of church, highest point in city, and all the roofs of all the houses open and they can see private stuff going on in everyone’s house. A kind of voyeurism-of-the-gods. From Brewer, p. 55 aspergillum—Catholic perforated container for sprinkling holy water athanasian—defender of Christianity; see Athanasius, Greek patriarch of Alexandria atomy—a very skinny person; (adj.) atomical atony—lack of normal muscle tone atopic—relating to inherited oversensitivity like allergies, hay fever autoclave—strong pressurized steam-heater for sterilizing surgical instruments, some kinds of cooking autophagy—self-digestion (of a cell via cell’s own enzymes) avulsion (medical n.) — the forcible tearing away of a body part by trauma or surgery; (v.) avulse awl—pointed tool for making holes axilla—armpit or similar hollow in a body part, like the hollow under a bird’s wing axiology—philosophy: the study of values and value judgments Baals—fertility gods of ancient Semitics bacchante—female reveler/orgier (priestess at Baccanal) baculiform—rod shaped baize—green felty stuff used for pool tables bandeau—narrow band for the hair bandoleer—chest-crossing belt w/pockets for cartridges or bullets banquette—platform lining trench where soldiers can fire from; sidewalk in east Texas and southern LA; long upholstered bench against or built into wall barbette—raised mound inside fort from which guns are fired over the parapet barbican—tower or other fortification on the approach to a castle or town beadle—usher at church service bedight—to dress or array belvedere—open, roofed structure built to command a view, like a press box bema—platform from which services are conducted in synagogue benefice—sinecure, church post w/secure income benignity—niceness, gentleness berm—narrow ledge or shelf on cliff or slope beurre blanc—butter & scallion sauce served w/seafood bezel—a slanting surface or bevel on a cutting tool like a chisel bier—stand for a coffin bifacial—having two faces or (of a bldg.) facades bifid—forked or split into two parts; botany bight—loop in a rope; middle or slack part of an extended rope or cable (phone lines have bights in the middle, etc.) birl—cause to spin rapidly with feet (as with logrolling)
FICTIONAL FUTURES AND THE CONSPICUOUSLY YOUNG
THE METRONOME OF LITERARY fashion looks to be set on presto. Beginning with the high-profile appearances of David Leavitt’s Family Dancing, Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, and Bret Ellis’s Less Than Zero, the last three-odd years saw a veritable explosion of good-willed critical and commercial interest in literary fiction by Conspicuously Young1 writers. During this interval, certain honored traditions of starvation and apprenticeship were inverted: writers’ proximity to their own puberties seemed now an asset; rumors had agents haunting prestigious writing workshops like pro scouts at Bowl games; publishers and critics jockeyed for position to proclaim their own beardless favorite “the first voice of a new generation.” Too, the upscale urban young quickly established themselves as a bona fide audience (and market) for C.Y. fiction: Ellis and McInerney, Janowitz and Leavitt, Simpson and Minot enjoy a popularity with their peers unknown since the relative popular disappearance of the sixties’ hip black humor squad.
As of this writing, late 1987, the backlash has been swift and severe, if not wholly unjustified. Many of the same trendy reviewers who in the mid-eighties were hailing the precocity of a New Generation now bemoan the proliferation of a literary Brat Pack. The Village Voice, which in 1985 formalized the apotheosis of McInerney in a gushy cover story, this autumn uses a scathing review of some McInerney disciples as occasion to headline the news that THE BRAT PACK SPITS UP, with crudely cut-out faces of Janowitz, McInerney, Ellis, et al. pasted on photos of diaper models. Nineteen eighty-seven saw the staff and guests of the New York Times Book Review suddenly complaining of a trend toward “world-weary creative writing projects,” a spate of “Y.A.W.N.S. (Young Anomic White Novelists),” an endless succession of flash-in-the-pan “short-story starlets.” In its October 11 issue, no less an éminence grise than William Gass administers “A Failing Grade for the Present Tense”:
You may have noticed the plague of school-styled [writers] with which our pages have been afflicted, and taken some account of the no-account magazines that exist in order to publish them. Thousands of short-story readers and writers have been released like fingerlings into the thin mainstream of serious prose…. Well, young people are young people, aren’t they…. Adolescents consume more of their psyches than soda, and more local feelings than junk food. Is no indulgence denied them?… I read [a recent Leavitt-edited anthology of C.Y. fiction] as a part of my researches. It is like walking through a cemetery before they’ve put in any graves.