Eclectic Words Per Page: Vocabulary from The New Yorker

Journal: Eclectic Words Per Page, Vocabulary from The New Yorker

   I have always been impressed, even astonished, at the eclectic vocabulary present in articles from The New Yorker.  It is my life-blood; it is oxygen for my inexorably atrophying frontal lobe.  Perhaps I am slightly starved for just a little conversational erudition…something to nourish my intellectual cachexia, my mental marasmus so to speak.  

     Here is an example: I have been working at pediatric clinics for the underserved for sixteen years in “the South,” having left my private practice on the gold coast of Connecticut in1998.  As one of the Fathers in my practice, upon hearing that I was leaving, looked at me in alarm and cried out “What are you going to do down there?”  Most recently, I was practicing in a rural town in South Carolina for eight years.  I recall one member of the nursing staff, noting that I was a voracious reader, pleasantly telling me “I read a book once.”   The emphasis was not exactly on ephemera or the pursuits of literati; it was all about football, barbecue, beer, huntin’ and fishin’… and I have to admit that there was much charm to be found in this.   Sort of like a continuous loop of The Andy Griffith Show.  I had amassed quite a large Southern vocabulary about cuttin’ lights on, mashing buttons and eating chitlins, but I still said “you guys,” desperately refusing to say y’all or pronounce the name “Jill” with three syllables.  I even incomprehensibly used that extinct species of word called the adverb.   

     Once, I went into the examining room to see a ten year old with a sore throat.  The Grandfather was sitting there, calmly reading “The New Yorker.” I did a double take.  I was intrigued.  This had not happened before (or since).  I asked how his grandson was doing.  He said, “He has a propensity for strep.”  That stopped me in my tracks as if a thunder bold had hit me.  “What did you say?” I whispered.  He looked up blankly, nonplussed.  I said hoarsely, “Did you use the word ‘propensity’?”  This led to a….well…a conversation.   

     With this in mind, I recently selected an issue at random from my ever-enlarging pile of treasured past editions of The New Yorker and did a little experiment.  The issue was October 19, 2015.  I decided to read every single word and to circle the words and phrases that I thought were interesting and eclectic.  My criteria?  I have to admit that they were very subjective:  it had to strike me as out of the ordinary, perhaps not being used in any recent conversations (a sad commentary for me…); it had to be literate, referential perhaps, the signs of a educated and inquisitive intellect, from someone who has maybe read a book. Maybe two.  In other words, I picked words that I liked.

    This particular issue has 99 pages (exclusive of the cartoon page) and my analysis really started on page 5 with Goings on About Town” (two words there…”post-minimalist” and “Baroque pastiche”).  I have always noted exquisite writing in every each and every section though, phrases that would make me stop and start, ruminate; a type of drive-way moment of the printed word.  This was true whether it was a description of a new restaurant in Tables for Two (two words: “fishmongers” and “double entendre”), a new jazz club under Night Life (one word: “melodic radiance”);  or a movie synopsis (i.e. “internecine,” “Dionysian,” “metaphysical grandeur” and “haut-bourgeouis”).  Yes, this was heaven for me and I know that there are many of you nodding your heads right now at this Dionysian pleasure of the mind. 

     So here is a list of the 122 words that I found and a non-internecine pastiche of observations and hypotheses at the end of this essay. 

Goings on About Town

post-minimalist

Baroque pastiche

Art

avant-garde

Vitrines

adjective-averse

marginalia

Piet Mondrian

moot

ad infinitum

The Theatre

hegemonic myths

travesty

gonzo sensuality

exultant perversity

fin-de-siecle

Movies

internecine

Dionysian

desynchronizes

a metaphysical grandeur

  haut-bourgeois

soliloquy

derisive artifice

parses

astringent drama

intrepid

bio-pic

Night Life

melodic radiance

Classical Music

theremins

proto-cinematic thriller

bevy

fortepianist

classic-rock titans

Dance

commedia-dell’arte

disjointed physical presence

Tables for Two

double entendre

Talk of the Town

Buddhist epistemology

bodhisattva

Financial Page

(none)

Annals of Public Safety

Celsius

American Chronicles by Kathryn Schulz

  prescient

pedagogy

paean

sententious

ostensible

parochial

incuriosity

misanthrope

parsimony

impugning

homage

caprice

fulminates

zealot

self-aggrandizing

disingenuousness

ersatz

Apologists

sanctimony

asceticism

salutary

paragon

Profiles

expiate

eschew

puerile

erst-while

kilims

Scheherazade

inextricable

matrilinity

Letter from Paris

ethnographic

nave

schlemiel

epithet

The Critics: Musical Events by Alex Ross

myriad

echt-New York

apparition

mordant

postmodern absurdism

ephemera

persona

Delphic power

insinuating complexity

essayistic

Habeus Corpus

A Critic At Large: Bombshells

Valhallan splendor

assuage

Books

melange of sadness

impresario

dystopian

titular 

peripatetic

didactic

like Botticelli’s Venus

Ovidian transformation

The Theatre

venality

paramour

The Art World, by Peter Schjeldahl

equanimity

dappled

lumpen-Surrealist

connoisseur of eccentricities

epoch-defining aficionado

scatological

abject

minimalism

psychedelia

potpourri

didactic religiosities

post-Edenic disarray

Gnostic manqué

grotesquerie

pastiche

vitiated

agglomeration

Current Cinema

zealotry

homage

dichotomy

Edwardian London

     A few thoughts on the above…  

     Amazingly, there are no repetitions among these 125 words and phrases.  Not one.  

     There is a plenitude of references to a vast array of subjects, none involving barbecue sauce:

Historical themes (fin-de-siecle, Edwardian London, haute bourgeouis)

Themes of classical literature and art (Gnostic, Ovid, Botticelli, Baroque, Piet Mondrian)

Norse mythology (Valhalla)

Greek mythology (Delphic, Venus, Dionysius)

Persian mythology  (Scheherazade)

Indian culture (bodhisattva, Buddhism)

Yiddishisms (schlemiel)

Apologists (Catholic or otherwise)

Perhaps to Shakespeare (soliloquy)

and even Science (Celsius, theremins) 

     An astounding breadth of references.  Ok, maybe three books. 

     There were no creative, iconic phrases in the financial section.  This explains why, as a Freshman at Princeton, I literally ran out of my first and only lecture on economics.  I was out of breath when I arrived at the Registrar’s office as I cancelled the Economics course and added “An Introduction to Existentialism.” 

     As to be expected from these insinuating intelligentsia and luminous (there is not one ‘L’ word above to complete this alliteration) literati, there is much humor, tongue-in-cheek irony and sarcasm (post-Edenic disarray pretty much sums up our, and by that I mean my, current situation).

      Now to the nitty gritty: 125 words out of 95 pages of writing.  This is 1.29 eclectic words per page.  As a  physician and sometimes mediocre-at-best scientist, I couldn’t help but come up with a name, a “constant” for this: the EWP count (Eclectic Words per Page).  I do have my favorite writers in The New Yorker that I take notice of in eager anticipation of their thoughts.  Interestingly, they seem to be the ones with the highest EWP counts. 

      The grand prize goes to Peter Schjeldahl who has 20 words (if you divide up some of the phrases, using an editorial prerogative) per 1 2/3 pages.  That is an award winning EWP of 12.0.   

     I love reading Kathryn Schulz and she has 22 words per 5 1/3 pages (by adding up 3 columns per page)…for an EWP of 4.13

     Not surprisingly, other titillating writers have EWP’s of Valhallan proportions: Alex Ross of Musical Events at an astounding 6.6, and the synopses of movies at 5.5

    Well, I’m done. Finis.  I may have pursued this topic to reductio absurdum, but all my synapses are now firing.   I might could just cut the lights off, mash this here computer button and go eat some gizzards…y’all.

Glenn Feole

May 26, 2017