Dramatis personnae--Biggest waste of space
Ken from Chicago
characters in good order. Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of the
story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits of a movie.
-- Ken from Chicago
P.S. Or even better, replace the DP with MAPS. Maps are usually much better
at actually informing readers (altho care has to be taken to not spoil the
story with too much annotation). Oh and / or maybe a glossary of
terms--which would have been really appreciated in the X-Wing Squadron
series for some of the flight maneuvers and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish,
hobbitish languages, some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
what the frell is a "sward"?).
Eric Walker
[...]
> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages, some of
> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
> "sward"?).
A common English word.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://greatsfandf.com
Now with forums.
Mike Schilling
> If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
> characters in good order. Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of
> the story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
>
> At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits of a
> movie.
You know, you don't have to read it first just because it appears
first.
Dorothy J Heydt
Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
>characters in good order.
Well, yes, you're supposed to introduce them a few at a
time. But if there are a whole lot of characters, and they
are all IN the first chapter or so, one has to do something
with them rather than calling them all by descriptive phrases
for the first five or six thousand words.
>
It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
nothing was revealed regarding whodunit. And the reader
wasn't expected to read the list before starting the book,
but it was very convenient to be able to go back and find out
"Mrs. Cutherbertson -- who the heck was she?"
>Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of the
>story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
Oh, they weren't. E.g., from the first Ngaio Marsh I plucked
out of my bookcase just now, _Hand in Glove_,
Alfred Bolt Manservant to Mr. Period
Mrs Mitchell Cook to Mr. Period
Mr. Percival Pyke Period
Nicola Maitland-Mayne
Desiree, Lady Bantling Now Mrs. Bimbo Dodds, formerly Mrs.
Harold Cartell, ne'e Desiree Ormsbury
Andrew Bantling Her son by her first marriage
Bimbo Dodds Her third and present husband
Mr. Harold Cartell Her second husband
Constance Cartell His sister
Trudi Her maid
Mary Ralston (Moppet) Her adopted niece
Leonard Leiss
George Copper Garage proprietor
Mrs Nicholls Wife of Vicar of Ribblethorpe
Superintended Williams Little Codling Constabulary
Sergeant Raikes Little Codling Constabulary
A foreman drainlayer
Superintended Roderick
Alleyn CID New Scotland Yard
Inspector Fox CID New Scotland Yard
Detective-Sergeant
Thompson CID New Scotland Yard
Detective-Sergeant
Bailey CID New Scotland Yard
Sir James Curtiss Pathologist
Dr. Elekton, MD
That's a lot of people. Note that Marsh doesn't say ANYthing
about several of them. That is in some cases because they
are the main characters (till the police show up) and you're
not likely to forget them, and in she doesn't WANT to tell
you anything more about them. Now, people who have read lots
of Marshes before this one wouldn't really need to be told
who Alleyn, Fox, Thompson, Bailey, and Sir James are,
because they've met them all before. But what about people
for whom this is their first encounter?
>
>At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits
>of a movie.
You could do that. But then people who were used to looking
for the list at the beginning might assume there simply
wasn't one in this book. Sprague de Camp did do a list of
people, places, and items at the end of _Rogue Queen_, but
then they were all in the local language ("pig-Welsh," I
think he called it) and the reader might be excused for
wanting a glossary.
>P.S. Or even better, replace the DP with MAPS. Maps are usually much better
>at actually informing readers (altho care has to be taken to not spoil the
>story with too much annotation).
Wait a minute. A list of dramatis personae -- the persons of
the drama -- is not likely to be usefully replaced by a
series of maps. Have you been talking about a list of PLACES
from the beginning of your post, and calling it a dramatis
personae instead of a gazetteer or something?
>Oh and / or maybe a glossary of
>terms--which would have been really appreciated in the X-Wing Squadron
>series for some of the flight maneuvers
Haven't read any of those, so I couldn't say. Are they the
same terms you'd encounter in a novel about 20th-century
aerial dogfights?
> and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish,
>hobbitish languages, some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>what the frell is a "sward"?).
A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
only nobody mows it.
You're reminding me of an essay I read once long ago in maybe
F&SF. There was a mention of a young woman who, on someone's
suggestion, was trying to read Merritt's _Ship of Ishtar._
"I don't like it," she said after a while. "I have to look
up too many words."
I didn't like _Ship of Ishtar_ either, not because Merritt
used words I didn't know (he didn't) but because in the first
few chapters that I read, the dam story didn't GO anywhere.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Greg Goss
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:01:01 -0500, Ken from Chicago wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages, some of
>> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
>> "sward"?).
>
>A common English word.
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, hm hm hm hm hm.
Not common on this side of the big water.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Greg Goss
>>some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>
>A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>only nobody mows it.
A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
Greg Goss
>>P.S. Or even better, replace the DP with MAPS. Maps are usually much better
>>at actually informing readers (altho care has to be taken to not spoil the
>>story with too much annotation).
>
>Wait a minute. A list of dramatis personae -- the persons of
>the drama -- is not likely to be usefully replaced by a
>series of maps. Have you been talking about a list of PLACES
>from the beginning of your post, and calling it a dramatis
>personae instead of a gazetteer or something?
He's talking about the use of space. Think of pages of a book as real
estate in a town. Unless you move the borders, a space will either be
a library or a coffee shop. This doesn't mean that you can start
complaining about the table service at the library.
Andy Leighton
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>>>some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>>
>>A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>>only nobody mows it.
>
> A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
> unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
> weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
Well prairies are bounded - they don't go on forever and ever - they
eventually bump into mountains, forested areas, water and stuff, but
I take your point. Sward doesn't fit into the taxonomy of
bounded/unbounded, level/unlevel. It is a merely a term for any piece
of land which is covered by short grass. It comes from the Old English
word for skin or rind - sweard.
--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_
Kurt Busiek
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>>> some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>> what the frell is a "sward"?).
>>
>> A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>> only nobody mows it.
>
> A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
> unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
> weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
Pretty much where meadows do. A sward is a grassland. Meadows can be
bounded or unbounded, so can swards.
It's mostly a case of different uses -- "meadow" tracks back to
proto-German, and originally refers to a grassland mown for hay, but
the usage has expanded to mean general non-arid grasslands.
"Sward" also tracks back to proto-Germanic, and means "the skin of the
Earth," referring to turf or sod.
So an area of grassy turf/sod, hilly or flat, bounded or unbounded, is
a sward -- anything from a front lawn to moorlands -- and the term
meadow used to be reserved for a place you'd harvest grass for hay, but
its usage has loosened up a lot, so there's more overlap.
But when Dennis Moore is riding through the sward, he's galloping
through grasslands, as opposed to woodlands or desert or town streets
or a river or something like that.
It's not a word much in use in the US, but it hardly needs to be
included in a glossary. Any half-decent dictionary will cover it.
kdb
Dorothy J Heydt
But he's still complaining about a list of characters, and
then says replace it by a map. This does not compute.
Dorothy J Heydt
Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>Eric Walker <webm...@greatsfandf.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:01:01 -0500, Ken from Chicago wrote:
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages, some of
>>> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
>>> "sward"?).
>>
>>A common English word.
>
>Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, hm hm hm hm hm.
>
>Not common on this side of the big water.
How common is common? I've known it since I was ten or so.
pan
Oh ... the 'salt of the earth' circa
1300 in merry olde would know the word for
'skin of the earth'.
JimboCat
wrote:
> If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
> characters in good order. Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of the
> story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
My pet peeve is when you finish a book, THEN find a "guide to
pronouncing the names" in the back. Too late.
Jim Deutch (JimboCat)
--
"I wasn't nitpicking, I was responding to a nitpicker." -- Erik Max
Francis
Kurt Busiek
> In article <7akkprF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>
>>>> P.S. Or even better, replace the DP with MAPS. Maps are usually
>> much better
>>>> at actually informing readers (altho care has to be taken to not
>> spoil the
>>>> story with too much annotation).
>>>
>>> Wait a minute. A list of dramatis personae -- the persons of
>>> the drama -- is not likely to be usefully replaced by a
>>> series of maps. Have you been talking about a list of PLACES
>>> from the beginning of your post, and calling it a dramatis
>>> personae instead of a gazetteer or something?
>>
>> He's talking about the use of space. Think of pages of a book as real
>> estate in a town. Unless you move the borders, a space will either be
>> a library or a coffee shop. This doesn't mean that you can start
>> complaining about the table service at the library.
>
> But he's still complaining about a list of characters, and
> then says replace it by a map. This does not compute.
He's complaining that the list of characters is useless and/or risks
constituting spoilers, so he doesn't see why it's there at all. He'd
rather have a map.
Not because it's a different way of delivering the same information,
but because he'd rather the space was devoted to different information.
That computes fine for me, at least -- he doesn't want the list of
characters, so he's suggesting ways he thinks the space could be better
used, not other ways to list characters.
For me, it depends on the work; I'm happier to have a dramatis personae
at the beginning of ROMEO & JULIET than I would be to have a map. For
a lot of books, I'd rather have a map. For Books 2-4 of THE KINGDOMS
OF THORN & BONE, I'd find both useful.
kdb
David DeLaney
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>>some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>>
>>A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>>only nobody mows it.
>
>A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
>unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
>weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
In the opposite direction from a wabe?
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
> only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
> began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
> nothing was revealed regarding whodunit.
Speaking of which, when Agatha Christie adapted her story "Witness
for the Prosecution" for the stage, she had to change the ending to
avoid putting a spoiler in the cast list.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
P. Taine
Which side of which "big water"? Perhaps it's the "shining big sea water" and
he's from Minnesota?
I'm a New Yorker and I've certainly known (and understood) the phrase "green
sward" as long as my memory goes back.
Dorothy J Heydt
P. Taine <us...@domaine.invalid> wrote:
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:27:26 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>Heydt) wrote:
>
>>In article <7akkfuF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>>>Eric Walker <webm...@greatsfandf.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:01:01 -0500, Ken from Chicago wrote:
>>>>
>>>>[...]
>>>>
>>>>> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages, some of
>>>>> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
>>>>> "sward"?).
>>>>
>>>>A common English word.
>>>
>>>Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, hm hm hm hm hm.
>>>
>>>Not common on this side of the big water.
>>
>>How common is common? I've known it since I was ten or so.
>>
>water" and
>he's from Minnesota?
>
>I'm a New Yorker and I've certainly known (and understood) the phrase "green
>sward" as long as my memory goes back.
Well, I *think* he meant the New World side of the Atlantic,
though I can't prove it.
I live on this side of the Atlantic too.
Kurt Busiek
Likewise, but I'm pretty sure I know it from British kids books and
tales of King Arthur and like that.
I don't think I've ever heard an American use the word in casual
speech, or refer to Ohio's rolling greensward or some other such usage.
It's a word I know, but in a "British English" context.
kdb
Dorothy J Heydt
David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>>>some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>>>
>>>A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>>>only nobody mows it.
>>
>>A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
>>unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
>>weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
>
>In the opposite direction from a wabe?
Pretty near to a wabe actually. A wabe, as any fule kno, is
the grass plot around a sundial, so called because it goes a
long way before it in front, and a long way behind it in
back, and a long way beside it on either side.
And there's a perfectly good reason for that, since you have
to have the sundial out in the open where the sun will shine
on it.
So every wabe is a sward, but not every sward is big enough
to be a wabe. Next question?
Dorothy J Heydt
Oh, o-o-o-o-o-kay. I can see that, though I don't agree with
it necessarily. Maps are nice; dramatis personae are nice.
Both are intended to provide useful information to the
readers.
>
>For me, it depends on the work; I'm happier to have a dramatis personae
>at the beginning of ROMEO & JULIET than I would be to have a map. For
>a lot of books, I'd rather have a map. For Books 2-4 of THE KINGDOMS
>OF THORN & BONE, I'd find both useful.
Exactly. One person's wasted paperage is another's essential
information.
Dorothy J Heydt
Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@tx.rr.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
>> only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
>> began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
>> nothing was revealed regarding whodunit.
>
>Speaking of which, when Agatha Christie adapted her story "Witness
>for the Prosecution" for the stage, she had to change the ending to
>avoid putting a spoiler in the cast list.
She didn't need to have, strictly speaking. All she had to
do was describe each character in terms of what we know about
him/her (in this case, her) at the very beginning, and then
let the revelations revolve in the course of the plot.
F'rinstance, if I were doing a dramatis personae with
descriptions for Sayers's _Busman's Honeymoon_ (which Sayers
did not, she merely listed the names), I would include the
line
Frank Crutchley, handyman and gardener
I would say nothing else about him, and would be giving
nothing away.
Sayers did write (sometimes lengthy) character sketches for
the actors, who of course knew, long before the curtain went
up, whodunnit. She said,
"Crutchley is about 30. He is dark and has a kind of sulky
good-looks which women find attractive. His aim in life is
to "get on"; & he is a good workman, keen on his job & doing
it well. He is hampered by a powerful conceit of himself,
which leads him to overrate his own cleverness. He does not
like to receive instruction, feeling that he is perfectly
capable of carving out his own career. Of all the people in
the play, he is the only one who resents Peter's wealth and
standing."
Konrad Gaertner
>
> In article <4A452E08...@tx.rr.com>,
> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@tx.rr.com> wrote:
> >Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >>
> >> It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
> >> only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
> >> began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
> >> nothing was revealed regarding whodunit.
> >
> >Speaking of which, when Agatha Christie adapted her story "Witness
> >for the Prosecution" for the stage, she had to change the ending to
> >avoid putting a spoiler in the cast list.
>
> She didn't need to have, strictly speaking. All she had to
> do was describe each character in terms of what we know about
> him/her (in this case, her) at the very beginning, and then
> let the revelations revolve in the course of the plot.
Actually, no she couldn't in this case.
Spoilers....
The end of the story revealed that the "Other Woman" was actually
the "Wife" in disguise. When adapted to the stage, she had to
a) have two different actresses play the same character
b) lie on the cast page
c) add another "Other Woman" at the end
and she chose c).
mimus
> If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
> characters in good order. Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of the
> story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
>
> At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits of a movie.
They can help where the cast of characters is going to be large, and can
also be quite amusing adjuncts to a novel.
I cite for your examination Lindsay Davis' whatever- the- plural- is- for-
dramatis- personae to her "Falco" novels, her detective stories set in
Imperial Rome.
--
Tell it to the praetor.
Greg Goss
>In article <7akkfuF...@mid.individual.net>,
>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>>Eric Walker <webm...@greatsfandf.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:01:01 -0500, Ken from Chicago wrote:
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages, some of
>>>> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
>>>> "sward"?).
>>>
>>>A common English word.
>>
>>Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, hm hm hm hm hm.
>>
>>Not common on this side of the big water.
>
>How common is common? I've known it since I was ten or so.
I think that my ONLY encounter with the word was in the Monty Python
thing quoted above and in other similar parodies of outdated material.
Greg Goss
>Pretty near to a wabe actually. A wabe, as any fule kno, is
>the grass plot around a sundial, so called because it goes a
>long way before it in front, and a long way behind it in
>back, and a long way beside it on either side.
>
>And there's a perfectly good reason for that, since you have
>to have the sundial out in the open where the sun will shine
>on it.
So why don't you stick your wabe where... HEY!
Joseph Nebus
I've never noticed the word, even in the Monty Python context.
Out of curiousity I put 'sward' into Google News, and it turned up
fifty current articles with the word. The top one is Farmers Weekly,
discussing chicory as part of a ryegrass/clover mix and is a British
publication. The next two use 'Sward' as people's names; the next is
a Horticulture Week article about cricket pitches.
The next reference is from 'Loot Ninja', and appears to be a
typo for 'sword'.
Finally the San Francisco Chronicle has an unmistakable use
of 'sward' meaning sward and coming from the United States, in a
feature piece about a hiking trail that the author's friend talked him
into hiking.
The next article is something called the Daily Triumph which
seems to be African although I can't make out where more exactly than
that; Famers Guardian (which doesn't explicitly state its nation of
origin but gives it away with terms like 'advert' and 'Ltd'); the
Herald (UK), and the Morpeth Herald.
The next reference appears to again be a typo for 'sword'; then
people's names twice, then another typo for 'sword'; Farmer's Guardian,
and a New York Times blog entry talking about tennis courts. The next
references are BBC News, the Irish Independent, person's name, and the
Irish Independent again.
I think if this suggests anything it's that 'sward' is rather
more popular among non-US speakers, except for whatever technical use
it may have.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken from Chicago
"Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
news:h23cak$scf$1...@solani.org...
Yes, like "lorry", "scones" and "fish and chips", I knew of them from
watching British shows, DOCTOR WHO, BENNY HILL, THE TWO RONNIES, etc.
However I hadn't heard "sward" from British imports and hadn't the terms
used here in the States. Mention "fish and chips" to my American friends and
they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--altho Arthur
Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
-- Ken from Chicago
Joel Olson
news:h22ini$uho$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Ken from Chicago wrote:
>> If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
>> characters in good order. Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of
>> the story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
>>
>> At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits of a
>> movie.
>
They put if first so you'll know its there when you get to page 83
and need to check whose cousin wears the green cloak.
Joel Olson
news:7akkn3F...@mid.individual.net...
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>>>some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>>
>>A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
>>only nobody mows it.
>
> A field is bounded and level; a prairie (aka veldt, steppe, etc) is
> unbounded and level. I think of meadows as bounded, but that's a
> weaker linkage. Where do swards fit in?
>
Only city kids think all fields are level, and would extend that to
larger areas.
And "bounded"? Do you mean fenced?
Ken from Chicago
"Konrad Gaertner" <kgae...@tx.rr.com> wrote in message
news:4A4540C3...@tx.rr.com...
> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> In article <4A452E08...@tx.rr.com>,
>> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@tx.rr.com> wrote:
>> >Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> >>
>> >> It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
>> >> only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
>> >> began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
>> >> nothing was revealed regarding whodunit.
>> >
>> >Speaking of which, when Agatha Christie adapted her story "Witness
>> >for the Prosecution" for the stage, she had to change the ending to
>> >avoid putting a spoiler in the cast list.
>>
>> She didn't need to have, strictly speaking. All she had to
>> do was describe each character in terms of what we know about
>> him/her (in this case, her) at the very beginning, and then
>> let the revelations revolve in the course of the plot.
>
> Actually, no she couldn't in this case.
>
> Spoilers....
<snip>
Gotta agree with Dorothy, do a second cast list at the end of the play (in
harmony with my OP that the DP be at the end of a novel).
If you're referring to the cast list advertised before the play begins she
could have had "??? as 'Other Woman'" or even simpler, don't include 'Other
Woman' in the cast list. Merely have the actress listed as the public
character while not listing her as the 'Other Woman'.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:KLur4...@kithrup.com...
> In article <Mf6dnXXovqv8AdnX...@giganews.com>,
> Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
>>characters in good order.
>
> time. But if there are a whole lot of characters, and they
> are all IN the first chapter or so, one has to do something
> with them rather than calling them all by descriptive phrases
> for the first five or six thousand words.
See, that just seems like bad storytelling if you literally need a scorecard
to tell the characters in your story. I didn't need a DP for LORD OF THE
RINGS, DUNE, FOUNDATION trilogies despite their "cast of thousands", because
the writer introduced the characters with sufficient description in the
story to make them stand out.
Having a DP at the end of a novel works for me in case I'm trying to recall
a particular character in the wake of reading a story.
> It used to be the custom to list the dramatis personae (note,
> only one N) of a mystery novel in a list before the text
Yes, leave it to RASFW to break the unwritten rule about picking on typos.
>=^>
> began. One had, of course, to write it in such a way that
> nothing was revealed regarding whodunit. And the reader
> wasn't expected to read the list before starting the book,
> but it was very convenient to be able to go back and find out
> "Mrs. Cutherbertson -- who the heck was she?"
>
>>Worse, the DP will actually spoil part of the
>>story if the descriptions of said characters are too detailed.
>
> Oh, they weren't. E.g., from the first Ngaio Marsh I plucked
> out of my bookcase just now, _Hand in Glove_,
>
> Alfred Bolt Manservant to Mr. Period
> Mrs Mitchell Cook to Mr. Period
> Mr. Percival Pyke Period
> Nicola Maitland-Mayne
> Desiree, Lady Bantling Now Mrs. Bimbo Dodds, formerly Mrs.
> Harold Cartell, ne'e Desiree Ormsbury
> Andrew Bantling Her son by her first marriage
> Bimbo Dodds Her third and present husband
> Mr. Harold Cartell Her second husband
> Constance Cartell His sister
> Trudi Her maid
> Mary Ralston (Moppet) Her adopted niece
> Leonard Leiss
> George Copper Garage proprietor
> Mrs Nicholls Wife of Vicar of Ribblethorpe
> Superintended Williams Little Codling Constabulary
> Sergeant Raikes Little Codling Constabulary
> A foreman drainlayer
> Superintended Roderick
> Alleyn CID New Scotland Yard
> Inspector Fox CID New Scotland Yard
> Detective-Sergeant
> Thompson CID New Scotland Yard
> Detective-Sergeant
> Bailey CID New Scotland Yard
> Sir James Curtiss Pathologist
> Dr. Elekton, MD
>
> That's a lot of people. Note that Marsh doesn't say ANYthing
> about several of them. That is in some cases because they
> are the main characters (till the police show up) and you're
> not likely to forget them, and in she doesn't WANT to tell
> you anything more about them. Now, people who have read lots
> of Marshes before this one wouldn't really need to be told
> who Alleyn, Fox, Thompson, Bailey, and Sir James are,
> because they've met them all before. But what about people
> for whom this is their first encounter?
That all said, what's the purpose of such a list before the story? They are
just names on a page. They mean little to nothing to me before reading the
story. I'd prefer it at the end as a fond remembrance of said characters in
the story.
>>At the very least, put it at the end--like the ending credits
>>of a movie.
>
> You could do that. But then people who were used to looking
> for the list at the beginning might assume there simply
> wasn't one in this book. Sprague de Camp did do a list of
DP at the end but Table Of Contents at the beginning alerting readers of
said DP at the end.
> people, places, and items at the end of _Rogue Queen_, but
> then they were all in the local language ("pig-Welsh," I
> think he called it) and the reader might be excused for
> wanting a glossary.
Glossary is good.
>>P.S. Or even better, replace the DP with MAPS. Maps are usually much
>>better
>>at actually informing readers (altho care has to be taken to not spoil the
>>story with too much annotation).
>
> Wait a minute. A list of dramatis personae -- the persons of
> the drama -- is not likely to be usefully replaced by a
> series of maps. Have you been talking about a list of PLACES
> from the beginning of your post, and calling it a dramatis
> personae instead of a gazetteer or something?
As mentioned downthread, I think DP is in and of itself a waste of time,
effort, and possible spoiler at the beginning of the novel, and possibly
even at the end if it's replacing a good map and / or glossary of unfamiliar
terms.
>>Oh and / or maybe a glossary of
>>terms--which would have been really appreciated in the X-Wing Squadron
>>series for some of the flight maneuvers
>
> Haven't read any of those, so I couldn't say. Are they the
> same terms you'd encounter in a novel about 20th-century
> aerial dogfights?
Yes, in some case. Natch, being SF-tinged there are some terms unique to
Star Wars.
>> and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish,
>>hobbitish languages, some of the geography terms were horrendous, I mean,
>>what the frell is a "sward"?).
>
> A piece of ground covered with grass. Rather like a lawn,
> only nobody mows it.
"Grassland", "field", "grassy plains".
Tho to be fair, Tolkien is British and wrote it back in the 1950s. I'm not
blaming him. I look more askance at publishers releasing 21st century
editions without such an add-on glossary. Altho I do credit them for
including maps--which would have been nice in the MOVIE versions so the
audience could get a feel for WHERE actions were occurring. Imaging a map
superimposed on a screen showing where the various hobbits, Frodo, Sam,
Merry, Pippin were located the movie cut from scene to scene.
> You're reminding me of an essay I read once long ago in maybe
> F&SF. There was a mention of a young woman who, on someone's
> suggestion, was trying to read Merritt's _Ship of Ishtar._
> "I don't like it," she said after a while. "I have to look
> up too many words."
While I appreciate stories that don't talk down to me (I know what a
"Philosopher's Stone" is, so, no, you don't have to rename it "Sorceror's
Stone"), I also feel I shouldn't have to carry a dictionary also to enjoy a
novel. The ocassional word or term, ok, but Tolkien was coming fast and
often with the geological terms in LOTR.
> I didn't like _Ship of Ishtar_ either, not because Merritt
> used words I didn't know (he didn't) but because in the first
> few chapters that I read, the dam story didn't GO anywhere.
>
> Dorothy J. Heydt
> Vallejo, California
> djheydt at hotmail dot com
> Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
> Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters
-- Ken from Chicago.
Dorothy J Heydt
>Mention "fish and chips" to my American friends and
>they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--
>altho Arthur Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
Good.
Lord.
In a major American city, there are people who don't
understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
"fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
I am really astonished to learn this.
Dorothy J Heydt
>Gotta agree with Dorothy, do a second cast list at the end of the play (in
>harmony with my OP that the DP be at the end of a novel).
>
>If you're referring to the cast list advertised before the play begins she
>could have had "??? as 'Other Woman'" or even simpler, don't include 'Other
>Woman' in the cast list. Merely have the actress listed as the public
>character while not listing her as the 'Other Woman'.
Yes. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the play: has the
"Wife" (who the "Other Woman" turns out to be) appear in
propria persona during the earlier scenes? Or does she just
mysteriously appear as the "Other Woman" and then it's later
disclosed that she's also the wife?
I am now remembering an entirely forgettable mystery drama
called _Tiger House_ which was put on by the drama department
when I was a freshman in high school. There was a mysterious
masked character called "Tiger Man." He turned out to be one
of the other characters in the play. The cast list in the
program gave the names of the other characters and who was
playing them, but the last entry read
Tiger Man ... ???
Dorothy J Heydt
Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>That all said, what's the purpose of such a list before the story? They are
>just names on a page. They mean little to nothing to me before reading the
>story. I'd prefer it at the end as a fond remembrance of said characters in
>the story.
As pointed out above, it's so that you can go back to the
list when you're not certain who's who.
>
>Tho to be fair, Tolkien is British and wrote it back in the 1950s. I'm not
>blaming him. I look more askance at publishers releasing 21st century
>editions without such an add-on glossary.
Once more, you are reminding me of the woman who couldn't
read Merritt "because I have to look up too many words."
Altho I do credit them for
>including maps--which would have been nice in the MOVIE versions so the
>audience could get a feel for WHERE actions were occurring. Imaging a map
>superimposed on a screen showing where the various hobbits, Frodo, Sam,
>Merry, Pippin were located the movie cut from scene to scene.
Oh, lord. Those movies were bad enough. You are now going
to interrupt the story, wreck the suspension of disbelief
even further, by overlaying maps on the screen?
>
>While I appreciate stories that don't talk down to me (I know what a
>"Philosopher's Stone" is, so, no, you don't have to rename it "Sorceror's
>Stone"), I also feel I shouldn't have to carry a dictionary also to enjoy a
>novel. The ocassional word or term, ok, but Tolkien was coming fast and
>often with the geological terms in LOTR.
Geological terms????? Name one or two.
You are a supposedly educated adult. You should know these
words already.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Kurt Busiek
<kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
You still don't need a glossary in a book for words like "sward" or "lorry."
kdb
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<djh...@kithrup.com> writes
Possibly he meant geological to be hyperbole for archaic, not that sward
is archaic.
>
>You are a supposedly educated adult. You should know these
>words already.
>
>Dorothy J. Heydt
>Vallejo, California
>djheydt at hotmail dot com
>Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
>Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
chr...@balder.sabir.com
>
> "Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
> news:KLur4...@kithrup.com...
>> In article <Mf6dnXXovqv8AdnX...@giganews.com>,
>> Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>If you write well, then the reader will be introduced to the cast of
>>>characters in good order.
>>
>> Well, yes, you're supposed to introduce them a few at a
>> time. But if there are a whole lot of characters, and they
>> are all IN the first chapter or so, one has to do something
>> with them rather than calling them all by descriptive phrases
>> for the first five or six thousand words.
>
> See, that just seems like bad storytelling if you literally need a scorecard
> to tell the characters in your story. I didn't need a DP for LORD OF THE
> RINGS, DUNE, FOUNDATION trilogies despite their "cast of thousands", because
> the writer introduced the characters with sufficient description in the
> story to make them stand out.
I would argue that _Dune_ and _Foundation_ have nowhere near the
complexity of story that would require a DP for most readers who are
just reading straight through, and also have nowhere near the number
of characters of some modern books. (_Lord of the Rings_ is a special
case - I don't need a DP for the 3 volumes, but I want it if I'm
dealing with the some of the other dozens of volumes.)
Other works do need a DP. Erikson has 157 entries in his DP in one of
his later volumes, and there are literally hundreds of characters in
earlier volumes of the same series that don't make an appearence in
that volume. Even reading things straight through (as opposed to
spread out over months), that's a lot of characters to keep straight,
especially when characters disappear for 2-3 volumes at a time.
A DP is useful for series like Erikson's Malazan for almost everybody.
I would claim a DP is useful for some readers in many other cases,
when the readers have spread out their reading over a long period of
time. Most people don't read as intensely as readers in this forum!
Chris
Ken from Chicago
Not everyone is a fan of British pop culture. I used to watch DOCTOR WHO,
BENNY HILL, THE TWO RONNIES, MONTY PYTHON, BLACK ADDER, DANGER MOUSE (tho
never got into RED DWARF or BLAKE's 7), not to mention had read the
HITCHHIKER'S trilogy (back when it was a true trilogy), so I had a leg up
back in the 70s. I knew about fish and chips, flats, mates, rubbers, birds,
macintoshes (and not the computer or apples or apple computers), etc. from a
Brit point of view.
However a lot of people really don't take an interest in what goes on
outside of the country, like a lot of Brits during the height of the British
Empire, or Romans in the Roman heyday. Like a lot of New Yorkers / Los
Angelinos outside of their cities. How many of them would understand a "cat"
in a farm setting (besides a house cat)? or a "double-aught" in a rural
setting? And while they may be familiar with a "Dear John" how many would
understand if they heard of riding a "John Deer"?
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
Sure, you don't, Kurt. Your encyclopedic knowledge and phenomenal recall is
the stuff of legend.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Well, Columbia SC was not an international hub in the 1970s, but we had
a local fish & chips chain
http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=359
and we would have known about Fish & Chips anyway from having "Andy Capp"
in the local paper.
(Actually I found out after that post doing some looking through
old phone book ads that we had 3 Fish & Chips chains Chappy's/Cedric's,
Arthur Treacher and H. Salt, Esq.)
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Joy Beeson
wrote:
> I don't think I've ever heard an American use the word in casual
> speech, or refer to Ohio's rolling greensward or some other such usage.
> It's a word I know, but in a "British English" context.
For me, "sward" is an adventure-story word. I walk on the grass, John
Carter strides across the verdant sward.
Joy Beeson, central Indiana, U.S.A.
--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ -- sewing
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
P. Taine
There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish, Dwarvish, etc.) that
I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell to L�rien". I had to
look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have the copies I bought in 1955, in
Albany, New York, on Lark Street, although the dust jackets are in tatters.
Dorothy J Heydt
Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
>news:KLwIt...@kithrup.com...
>> In article <xrudneWjLonuJ9jX...@giganews.com>,
>> Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>
>>>Mention "fish and chips" to my American friends and
>>>they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--
>>>altho Arthur Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
>>
>> Good.
>>
>>
>> Lord.
>>
>>
>> In a major American city, there are people who don't
>> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
>> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
>> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
>>
>> I am really astonished to learn this.
>>
>
<snrk>
OK, people, tell him how much I am a fan of British or any
pop culture.
Kurt Busiek
<kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>>> Yes, like "lorry", "scones" and "fish and chips", I knew of them from
>>> watching British shows, DOCTOR WHO, BENNY HILL, THE TWO RONNIES, etc.
>>> However I hadn't heard "sward" from British imports and hadn't the terms
>>> used here in the States. Mention "fish and chips" to my American friends
>>> and
>>> they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--altho
>>> Arthur
>>> Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
>>
>> You still don't need a glossary in a book for words like "sward" or
>> "lorry."
>
> Sure, you don't, Kurt. Your encyclopedic knowledge and phenomenal recall is
> the stuff of legend.
No, I have a magic book. It's called a dictionary. I use it to look
up words I don't know. American writers sometimes use words I don't
know, too, so it's useful for those situations where I need to check
the meaning of a word.
The idea that you're helpless without a glossary suggests you want to
be spoonfed. Maybe you do, but the bulk of readers don't.
kdb
Sean O'Hara
> On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:40:44 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> You are a supposedly educated adult. You should know these
>> words already.
>
> I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell to L�rien". I had to
> look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have the copies I bought in 1955, in
> Albany, New York, on Lark Street, although the dust jackets are in tatters.
I had no trouble figuring out the words when I first read the book
at age eight. The only one to stump me was "helm" -- I initially
guessed correctly that it's a helmet, but then everyone started
talking about Helm's Deep without making clear that Helm was a guy's
name, leading me to think I had misinterpreted the word.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://www.diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
New audio book: As Long as You Wish by John O'Keefe
<http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-010/>
Dimensional Traveler
> In article <xrudneWjLonuJ9jX...@giganews.com>,
> Ken from Chicago <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Mention "fish and chips" to my American friends and
>> they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--
>> altho Arthur Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
>
> Good.
>
>
> Lord.
>
>
> In a major American city, there are people who don't
> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
>
> I am really astonished to learn this.
>
--
Things I learned from MythBusters #57: Never leave a loaded gun in an
exploding room.
Dorothy J Heydt
Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish,
>> Dwarvish, etc.) that I can remember being stumped by what
>> "hythe", in "Farewell to >L�rien". I had to look that one
>> up, a small harbor. (Still have the copies I bought in 1955, in
>> Albany, New York, on Lark Street, although the dust jackets are
>> in tatters.
The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it
meant the kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a
private temporary bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by
hanging up tapestries from convenient bits of woodwork.
Nope, turns out it's a little separate building, on the order
of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap shoddy little
hut, though, considering it's a place to house distinguished
guests.
>
>I had no trouble figuring out the words when I first read the book
>at age eight. The only one to stump me was "helm" -- I initially
>guessed correctly that it's a helmet, but then everyone started
>talking about Helm's Deep without making clear that Helm was a guy's
>name, leading me to think I had misinterpreted the word.
I would have to go searching through _TTT_ to find when the
first mention of Helm Hammerhand is, and it's too darned hot.
Pretty early on, though.
The thing I smack myself about whenever I think of it is the
personal and place names in Rohan. I could tell they were
Old English; I had just spent two years studying same* and
could translate everything ... Theoden "king", Gamling
"little old man", Dwimordene "haunted wood", dwimmerlaik
"haunted corpse". But I saw the forms were subtly different
from the Wessex forms I was used to, but I never realized
that they were different because they were carefully
reconstructed Old Mercian.
_______
*I discovered LotR in graduate school, in the early sixties,
before there were any American editions.
Matthew Malthouse
wrote:
> There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish, Dwarvish, etc.) that
> I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell to L�rien". I had to
> look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have the copies I bought in 1955, in
> Albany, New York, on Lark Street, although the dust jackets are in tatters.
That's archaic in English English, but persists in place names.
Matthew
--
Mail to this account goes to the bit bucket.
In the unlikely event you want to mail me replace usenet with my name
erilar
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> You are now going
> to interrupt the story, wreck the suspension of disbelief
> even further, by overlaying maps on the screen?
Yes, it would be an interruption in a movie, but in a book, I WANT
MAPS 8-)
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)
You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov
Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo�
erilar
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it
> meant the kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a
> private temporary bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by
> hanging up tapestries from convenient bits of woodwork.
> Nope, turns out it's a little separate building, on the order
> of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap shoddy little
> hut, though, considering it's a place to house distinguished
> guests.
That's what they stayed in at the althing in Thingvellir in Icelandic
sagas. Tolkien mined both Old Norse and Old English.
erilar
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In a major American city, there are people who don't
> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
I think many people know the difference between "fish and chips" in the
British and American usage here in flyover country as long as the
geographic location where it's being used is clear. I had never EATEN
the British version until I was there, and I really loved it 8-)
erilar
"Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> How many of them would understand a "cat"
> in a farm setting (besides a house cat)?
Construction people, I suspect. And the Bobcat as well. One was
used to replace my septic tank in a yard otherwise inaccessible by large
machinery.
>or a "double-aught" in a rural
> setting? And while they may be familiar with a "Dear John" how many would
> understand if they heard of riding a "John Deer"?
Nothing runs like a Deere 8-)
erilar
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> OK, people, tell him how much I am a fan of British or any
> pop culture.
It's hard to think of fish and chips as "pop culture", somehow.
Mike Ash
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In a major American city, there are people who don't
> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
To put it simply: yes.
In the midwest, foreign countries, especially those on other continents,
are a place where other people go, and which other people are familiar
with.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Dorothy J Heydt
erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>In article <KLwyA...@kithrup.com>,
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it
>> meant the kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a
>> private temporary bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by
>> hanging up tapestries from convenient bits of woodwork.
>> Nope, turns out it's a little separate building, on the order
>> of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap shoddy little
>> hut, though, considering it's a place to house distinguished
>> guests.
>
>That's what they stayed in at the althing in Thingvellir in Icelandic
>sagas. Tolkien mined both Old Norse and Old English.
>
Indeed he did. I've seen pictures of (reconstructed) booths
at Thingvellir; they were stone walls built up to about waist
height and covered with an A-frame ship-shelter. And maybe
that's what Tolkien had in mind too. Something you have
half-built, and can put a temporary roof on whenever you have
company.
Dorothy J Heydt
Matthew Malthouse <use...@calmeilles.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:50:46 GMT, P. Taine <us...@domaine.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>> There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish,
>Dwarvish, etc.) that
>> I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell to
>L�rien". I had to
>> look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have the copies I bought
>in 1955, in
>> Albany, New York, on Lark Street, although the dust jackets are in
>tatters.
>
>That's archaic in English English, but persists in place names.
Rotherhythe, e.g., a place in southwest England which gets
invaded by the Nazis in Forester's "If Hitler Had Invaded
England."
Dorothy J Heydt
erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>In article <KLwJF...@kithrup.com>,
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> You are now going
>> to interrupt the story, wreck the suspension of disbelief
>> even further, by overlaying maps on the screen?
>
>Yes, it would be an interruption in a movie, but in a book, I WANT
>MAPS 8-)
>
In a book, I like maps very much too. But when I'm reading
text, I can just skim over the page with the map in it (if
it's in the middle of the text), unless I actually want to
consult it.
Thomas Womack
>No, I have a magic book. It's called a dictionary. I use it to look
>up words I don't know. American writers sometimes use words I don't
>know, too, so it's useful for those situations where I need to check
>the meaning of a word.
I've almost never found a writer using a word I don't know in a way
that couldn't be figured out by context: OK, I wasn't quite sure what
Wolfe's baluchitheres looked like, but it's clear they're animals.
(there is also, of course, One for the Morning Glory)
Tom
Dorothy J Heydt
Thomas Womack <two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>In article <h25rlb$usk$1...@solani.org>, Kurt Busiek <ku...@busiek.com> wrote:
>
>>No, I have a magic book. It's called a dictionary. I use it to look
>>up words I don't know. American writers sometimes use words I don't
>>know, too, so it's useful for those situations where I need to check
>>the meaning of a word.
>
>I've almost never found a writer using a word I don't know in a way
>that couldn't be figured out by context: OK, I wasn't quite sure what
>Wolfe's baluchitheres looked like, but it's clear they're animals.
I can remember seeing a (reconstructed) picture of one in a
kids' magazine when I was about ten.
Eric Walker
[...]
> I am now remembering an entirely forgettable mystery drama called _Tiger
> House_ which was put on by the drama department when I was a freshman in
> high school. There was a mysterious masked character called "Tiger
> Man." He turned out to be one of the other characters in the play. The
> cast list in the program gave the names of the other characters and who
> was playing them, but the last entry read
>
> Tiger Man ... ???
Such problems are typically handled by assigning the character a spurious
name. "George Spelvin" was traditionally used till the porn actress
"Georgina Spelvin" tainted it; there are others now (see Wikipedia at
"George Spelvin").
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://greatsfandf.com
Now with forums.
CleV
Erikson's DPs are not really helpful anyway: for long time readers,
there's no reminders in them for who the characters are or what they
did in previous books, for new readers, they simply introduce the
characters in their most current status as of their first appearance
in the latest book ...
Dorothy J Heydt
Eric Walker <webm...@greatsfandf.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:32:14 +0000, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> I am now remembering an entirely forgettable mystery drama called _Tiger
>> House_ which was put on by the drama department when I was a freshman in
>> high school. There was a mysterious masked character called "Tiger
>> Man." He turned out to be one of the other characters in the play. The
>> cast list in the program gave the names of the other characters and who
>> was playing them, but the last entry read
>>
>> Tiger Man ... ???
>
>Such problems are typically handled by assigning the character a spurious
>name. "George Spelvin" was traditionally used till the porn actress
>"Georgina Spelvin" tainted it; there are others now (see Wikipedia at
>"George Spelvin").
Now, you may be right, but the use for "George Spelvin" I
always heard about was when the director himself was playing a
part and didn't want to be obvious about it.
Joy Beeson
Heydt) wrote:
> In a major American city, there are people who don't
> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
Warsaw Indiana is about as flyover as you can get, and the folks who
call malt vinegar "fish & chips vinegar" when they want to sell it in
teeny bottles as a gourmet item seem to think that we'll recognize the
term.
Just checked the bottle. It's "Old English Fish & Chip Vinegar", with
the "OLD ENGLISH" in very small type.
On the other hand, even though there are enough British people on my
sewing groups to make me nervous about referring to my plus-fours as
"knickers", crisps are the first thing to come to mind when I hear
"chips".
Joy Beeson
P. Taine
Ahem--- My first set, purchased when I was 22, in 1956 (although only TRotK is
dated) were published by Houghten Mifflen, Boston. They had different dust
jackets than the George Allen and Unwin edition. The were printed in Great
Britain, but have "Houghton Mifflin Company Boston/The Riverside Press
Cambridge" on the title page. They are complete with the maps. Unfortunately I
actually read them (several times before I got paperback copies) so they are not
pristine, and the dust jackets are falling apart. Too bad, after check the
prices on ABE!
Eric Walker
[...]
> [T]he use for "George Spelvin" I always heard about was when the
> director himself was playing a part and didn't want to be obvious about
> it.
I daresay that was and is one of the uses, but according to Wikipedia
(for what that's worth):
"George Spelvin, Georgette Spelvin, and Georgina Spelvin are the
traditional pseudonyms used in programs in American theater by actors
who don't want to be credited or whose names would otherwise appear
twice because they are playing more than one role in a production.
"In some mystery plays and melodramas, this name has appeared in cast
lists as the name of an actor (or actress) portraying a character who
is mentioned in the dialogue but never turns up onstage: by crediting
the role to "George Spelvin," the audience is not forewarned that the
character never makes an entrance."
Fans of Terry Pratchett may be amused to hear that "Walter Plinge" is
another such pseudonym.
John F. Eldredge
> In article <7anapuF...@mid.individual.net>, Sean O'Hara
> <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish, Dwarvish,
>>> etc.) that I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell
>>> to >Lórien". I had to look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have
>>> the copies I bought in 1955, in Albany, New York, on Lark Street,
>>> although the dust jackets are in tatters.
>
> The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it meant the
> kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a private temporary
> bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by hanging up tapestries from
> convenient bits of woodwork. Nope, turns out it's a little separate
> building, on the order of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap
> shoddy little hut, though, considering it's a place to house
> distinguished guests.
I was already aware of the double meaning of "booth" by the time I read
LOTR, because a Sunday-school teacher had taught about the New-Testament-
era Jewish "Festival of Booths", where the pilgrims would build temporary
huts to live in during the festival.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
Dorothy J Heydt
John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:01:28 +0000, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>> In article <7anapuF...@mid.individual.net>, Sean O'Hara
>> <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> There may have been others, but the only word (non-Elvish, Dwarvish,
>>>> etc.) that I can remember being stumped by what "hythe", in "Farewell
>>>> to >Lórien". I had to look that one up, a small harbor. (Still have
>>>> the copies I bought in 1955, in Albany, New York, on Lark Street,
>>>> although the dust jackets are in tatters.
>>
>> The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it meant the
>> kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a private temporary
>> bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by hanging up tapestries from
>> convenient bits of woodwork. Nope, turns out it's a little separate
>> building, on the order of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap
>> shoddy little hut, though, considering it's a place to house
>> distinguished guests.
>
>I was already aware of the double meaning of "booth" by the time I read
>LOTR, because a Sunday-school teacher had taught about the New-Testament-
>era Jewish "Festival of Booths", where the pilgrims would build temporary
>huts to live in during the festival.
Ah. I didn't have the advantage of a religious upbringing: I
was an adult convert and there are all sorts of trivia I don't
know to this day.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <7ao67bF...@mid.individual.net>,
> John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
> >
> >I was already aware of the double meaning of "booth" by the time I read
> >LOTR, because a Sunday-school teacher had taught about the New-Testament-
> >era Jewish "Festival of Booths", where the pilgrims would build temporary
> >huts to live in during the festival.
>
> Ah. I didn't have the advantage of a religious upbringing: I
> was an adult convert and there are all sorts of trivia I don't
> know to this day.
I *did* have a religious upbringing -- that is to say, I went to "teach
the kid something about his Jewish background" weekend class up
through age 13. (After the bar mitzvah, you're on your own.)
I mention this because, for all those years, I never heard Sukkot
called the "Festival of Booths". If someone had called the sukkah a
"booth" I would have been baffled. This thread is the first time I've
come across "booth" in that context.
Conclusion: trust the Catholics to come up with something the Jews
don't know about Judaism. I guess.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Dorothy J Heydt
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> In article <7ao67bF...@mid.individual.net>,
>> John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >I was already aware of the double meaning of "booth" by the time I read
>> >LOTR, because a Sunday-school teacher had taught about the New-Testament-
>> >era Jewish "Festival of Booths", where the pilgrims would build
>temporary
>> >huts to live in during the festival.
>>
>> Ah. I didn't have the advantage of a religious upbringing: I
>> was an adult convert and there are all sorts of trivia I don't
>> know to this day.
>
>I *did* have a religious upbringing -- that is to say, I went to "teach
>the kid something about his Jewish background" weekend class up
>through age 13. (After the bar mitzvah, you're on your own.)
My son-in-law says his mother dragged him through the same
process up till his bar mitzvah. After that he said "Never
again," has forgotten all his Hebrew, and is now a neo-pagan.
>
>I mention this because, for all those years, I never heard Sukkot
>called the "Festival of Booths". If someone had called the sukkah a
>"booth" I would have been baffled. This thread is the first time I've
>come across "booth" in that context.
>
>Conclusion: trust the Catholics to come up with something the Jews
>don't know about Judaism. I guess.
I wouldn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole, or even a
twelve-foot Bulgarian. But tell me something. Is the
Festival of Booths the one that comes fifty days after
Passover? If not, what is that one called?
Mike Schilling
> I mention this because, for all those years, I never heard Sukkot
> called the "Festival of Booths". If someone had called the sukkah a
> "booth" I would have been baffled. This thread is the first time
> I've
> come across "booth" in that context.
I've heard that since I was small. Maybe it's a Reform Jew.thing.
Mike Schilling
>
> I wouldn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole, or even a
> twelve-foot Bulgarian. But tell me something. Is the
> Festival of Booths the one that comes fifty days after
> Passover? If not, what is that one called?
Fifty days after Passover (in May or June) comes Shavuot, which is
sort of a harvest festival. Sukkot, which comes right after Yom
Kippur (in September or October), is the Festival of Booths.
Dorothy J Heydt
Thank you; now I know. So Shavuot ~= Pentecost.
Mike Schilling
> In article <h272m5$dcs$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>> I wouldn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole, or even a
>>> twelve-foot Bulgarian. But tell me something. Is the
>>> Festival of Booths the one that comes fifty days after
>>> Passover? If not, what is that one called?
>>
>> Fifty days after Passover (in May or June) comes Shavuot, which is
>> sort of a harvest festival. Sukkot, which comes right after Yom
>> Kippur (in September or October), is the Festival of Booths.
>
> Thank you; now I know. So Shavuot ~= Pentecost.
If you say so.
Seen a young girl in a parking lot, preaching to a crowd.
Singing sacred songs and reading from the Bible.
Well I told her I was lost and she told me all about the Pentecost.
And I seen that girl as the road to my survival.
Ken from Chicago
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:KLx2z...@kithrup.com...
Sounds like the Biblical "Festival of Booths", where the Israelites stayed
outside in booths (Leviticus 23:41-42). I imagined that as something between
a tent and a stall, like the booths you'd see at a comic book or computer
convention.
-- Ken from Chicago
Johnny Tindalos
78E0DD.155...@news.airstreamcomm.net:
> In article <KLwIt...@kithrup.com>,
> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> In a major American city, there are people who don't
>> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
>> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
>> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
>
> I think many people know the difference between "fish and chips" in the
> British and American usage here in flyover country as long as the
> geographic location where it's being used is clear. I had never EATEN
> the British version until I was there, and I really loved it 8-)
>
Dammit, now I'm hungry! And there's a chipshop down the road...only
problem is the hill I live on top of is so steep, that the amount of
adrenaline produced by stomping up it is enough to quite kill the
appetite...and all the nice places to actually sit and eat one's fish &
chips are on top of the hill!
"Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then a
Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
Ken from Chicago
"Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
news:h25rlb$usk$1...@solani.org...
> On 2009-06-27 11:05:19 -0700, "Ken from Chicago"
> <kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>
>>
>> "Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
>> news:h25b9s$k3q$1...@solani.org...
>>> On 2009-06-26 23:21:36 -0700, "Ken from Chicago"
>>> <kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:h23cak$scf$1...@solani.org...
>>>>> On 2009-06-26 13:32:46 -0700, P. Taine <us...@domaine.invalid> said:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:27:26 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>>>>>> Heydt)
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In article <7akkfuF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>>>>>> Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Eric Walker <webm...@greatsfandf.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> . . . and LOTR (forget elvish, dwarvish, hobbitish languages,
>>>>>>>>>> some
>>>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>>>> the geography terms were horrendous, I mean, what the frell is a
>>>>>>>>>> "sward"?).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> A common English word.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, hm hm hm hm hm.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Not common on this side of the big water.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> How common is common? I've known it since I was ten or so.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dorothy J. Heydt
>>>>>>> Vallejo, California
>>>>>>> djheydt at hotmail dot com Should you wish to email me, you'd better
>>>>>>> use
>>>>>>> the hotmail edress.
>>>>>>> Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's
>>>>>>> filters.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> water" and
>>>>>> he's from Minnesota?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm a New Yorker and I've certainly known (and understood) the phrase
>>>>>> "green
>>>>>> sward" as long as my memory goes back.
>>>>>
>>>>> Likewise, but I'm pretty sure I know it from British kids books and
>>>>> tales
>>>>> of King Arthur and like that.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think I've ever heard an American use the word in casual
>>>>> speech,
>>>>> or refer to Ohio's rolling greensward or some other such usage. It's a
>>>>> word I know, but in a "British English" context.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, like "lorry", "scones" and "fish and chips", I knew of them from
>>>> watching British shows, DOCTOR WHO, BENNY HILL, THE TWO RONNIES, etc.
>>>> However I hadn't heard "sward" from British imports and hadn't the
>>>> terms
>>>> used here in the States. Mention "fish and chips" to my American
>>>> friends
>>>> and
>>>> they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and fries--altho
>>>> Arthur
>>>> Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
>>>
>>> You still don't need a glossary in a book for words like "sward" or
>>> "lorry."
>>
>> Sure, you don't, Kurt. Your encyclopedic knowledge and phenomenal recall
>> is
>> the stuff of legend.
>
> No, I have a magic book. It's called a dictionary. I use it to look up
> words I don't know. American writers sometimes use words I don't know,
> too, so it's useful for those situations where I need to check the meaning
> of a word.
>
> spoonfed. Maybe you do, but the bulk of readers don't.
>
> kdb
Whoa! My bad. I get it now. You are a HOME READER! You read at home. Between
tv, internet, video games, even the radio, I almost never read fiction at
home (the ocassion power outage and, well, ahem, the ... "reading throne").
Since 99.99 % of my fiction reading is on the bus or during lunch breaks,
dictionaries aren't nearby.
But yes, I totally concede if I read at home, I'd have no problem pulling
out my dictionary or searching for words in MS Word or googling it.
-- Ken from Chicago
P.S. "The number one reason for arguments: People defining the same terms
differently."--Ken from Chicago.
P.P.S. "D'oh!"--Dan Castellaneta, 'Homer Simpson', THE SIMPSONS.
Brett Paul Dunbar
<two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes
Baluchitherium (Forster Cooper, 1913) and Indricotherium (Borissiak,
1915) are now believed to be junior subjective synonyms of
Paraceratherium (Forster Cooper.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraceratherium> has a photo of a skeletal
mount and three different life reconstruction. Paraceratherium was a
rather horse-like giant hornless rhino and was the largest known land
mammal.
--
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/
Brett Paul Dunbar
To email me, use reply-to address
W. Citoan
Sukkah translated into English is booth. One of the early definition of
booth is "a temporary shelter for livestock or field workers".
It makes sense that Jews use the Hebrew term and that English speaking
Christians use the English term. It not a case of making something up
about Judaism.
- W. Citoan
--
Wilt thou seal up avenues of ill? Pay every debt, as though God wrote the
bill.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ken from Chicago
"Johnny Tindalos" <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote in message
news:Xns9C3880FE9C7AAJa...@216.196.109.145...
> erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote in news:drache-
> 78E0DD.155...@news.airstreamcomm.net:
>
>> In article <KLwIt...@kithrup.com>,
>> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>
>>> In a major American city, there are people who don't
>>> understand the secondary meaning of "chips" in the context of
>>> "fish and"? Is the Western US *that* much more cosmopolitan
>>> than what is sometimes rudely called "flyover country"??
>>
>> I think many people know the difference between "fish and chips" in the
>> British and American usage here in flyover country as long as the
>> geographic location where it's being used is clear. I had never EATEN
>> the British version until I was there, and I really loved it 8-)
>>
>
> Dammit, now I'm hungry! And there's a chipshop down the road...only
> problem is the hill I live on top of is so steep, that the amount of
> adrenaline produced by stomping up it is enough to quite kill the
> appetite...and all the nice places to actually sit and eat one's fish &
> chips are on top of the hill!
A little exercise would work UP an appettite.
> "Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
> tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
> round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then a
> Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
Land of the Flyover Lost.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"erilar" <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:drache-A215DE....@news.airstreamcomm.net...
> In article <KLwJF...@kithrup.com>,
>> to interrupt the story, wreck the suspension of disbelief
>> even further, by overlaying maps on the screen?
>
> Yes, it would be an interruption in a movie, but in a book, I WANT
> MAPS 8-)
>
> Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)
>
> You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
> that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov
>
> Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo
Maps in movies and tv shows so totally work!
THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR used it beautifully to show Our Heroes
travelling from town to town chasing the villain or the macguffin of the
episode.
The way it should be done is zoom out from a scene to show the a map where
the scene is shown, traveling to some location and zoom in there.
Classic movies and tv shows in the first half of the 20th century often had
a shot of Our Heroes flying in some plane or on horseback going to a map
where an animated line travels to some destination.
It works great in setting up where everyone is when they are spread out.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:KLx32...@kithrup.com...
In books, I'd prefer the map be at the front or back (assuming there's a
table of contents alerting me so I know where to look to see where scenes
are occurring in the middle of a book, instead of having to search thru a
book for a map).
-- Ken from Chicago
Dorothy J Heydt
Johnny Tindalos <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote:
>
>"Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
>tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
>round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then a
>Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
Well, not passing pedestrians, but aircraft flying overhead
from one coast to the other.
It's a derogatory term, though, and I tried to dissociate
myself from it ... it alludes to the fact that Americans on
both coasts tend to be more cosmopolitan, because there's
more contact with other countries, their inhabitants, their
cuisines. Actually the people in the center of the continent
are perfectly nice, even if they do tend to vote Republican;
but I hadn't realized before this that anyone there could be
so isolated from the rest of the world as not to know fish
and chips.
Dorothy J Heydt
>news:KLx2z...@kithrup.com...
>> In article <drache-493AC3....@news.airstreamcomm.net>,
>> erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>In article <KLwyA...@kithrup.com>,
>>> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>>
>>>> The word that initally threw me was "booth." I thought it
>>>> meant the kind of small enclosure you would create, to make a
>>>> private temporary bedroom, in a great hall like Edoras by
>>>> hanging up tapestries from convenient bits of woodwork.
>>>> Nope, turns out it's a little separate building, on the order
>>>> of a hut, outside the main hall. Not a cheap shoddy little
>>>> hut, though, considering it's a place to house distinguished
>>>> guests.
>>>
>>>That's what they stayed in at the althing in Thingvellir in Icelandic
>>>sagas. Tolkien mined both Old Norse and Old English.
>>>
>>
>> Indeed he did. I've seen pictures of (reconstructed) booths
>> at Thingvellir; they were stone walls built up to about waist
>> height and covered with an A-frame ship-shelter. And maybe
>> that's what Tolkien had in mind too. Something you have
>> half-built, and can put a temporary roof on whenever you have
>> company.
>>
>outside in booths (Leviticus 23:41-42). I imagined that as something
>between
>a tent and a stall, like the booths you'd see at a comic book or computer
>convention.
Except that the ones in Rohan would have to be rainproof!
P. Taine
TV shows? We were rather early adopters, and we got our first TV set in 1948.
What TV shows from the first half of the 20th century are you referring to????
W. Citoan
> In article <Xns9C3880FE9C7AAJa...@216.196.109.145>,
> Johnny Tindalos <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote:
> >
> >"Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
> >tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
> >round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then
> >a Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
>
> Well, not passing pedestrians, but aircraft flying overhead from one
> coast to the other.
>
> It's a derogatory term, though, and I tried to dissociate myself from
> it ... it alludes to the fact that Americans on both coasts tend to
> be more cosmopolitan, because there's more contact with other
> countries, their inhabitants, their cuisines.
Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
> Actually the people in the center of the continent
> are perfectly nice, even if they do tend to vote Republican;
> but I hadn't realized before this that anyone there could be
> so isolated from the rest of the world as not to know fish
> and chips.
Fish & chips is available in the middle. I've had it in small towns
before. The original question was knowing chips means fries in Britain.
I'd wager it is less to do with the absence of fish & chips and more
people not stopping to think about the name vs. associating it with a
specific dish.
Ken from Chicago
> In article <Xns9C3880FE9C7AAJa...@216.196.109.145>,
> Johnny Tindalos <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote:
>>
>>"Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
>>tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
>>round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then a
>>Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
>
> Well, not passing pedestrians, but aircraft flying overhead
> from one coast to the other.
>
> It's a derogatory term, though, and I tried to dissociate
> myself from it ... it alludes to the fact that Americans on
> both coasts tend to be more cosmopolitan, because there's
> more contact with other countries, their inhabitants, their
> cuisines. Actually the people in the center of the continent
> are perfectly nice, even if they do tend to vote Republican;
There was a huge blue peninsula--with a really dark blue county in the
northern part of it--even in the 2004 election that is yet another counter
to the stereotype about "flyover country".
> but I hadn't realized before this that anyone there could be
> so isolated from the rest of the world as not to know fish
> and chips.
How much British culture is aired in America mainstream news and
entertainment media? When was the last 3 times you've heard the phrase "fish
and chips"?
> Dorothy J. Heydt
> Vallejo, California
> djheydt at hotmail dot com
> Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
> Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
I like to consider myself somewhat aware of some of Brit culture over the
decades (altho I could trip of Brit version of "Lilo", "Paris Hilton",
"Lauren Conrad", et al. of their latest pop / tv / movie / music celebs and
not have clue one who they are), but I only just heard heard the phrase "pie
and chips" until 3 years ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv/msg/0cd674f041136b69?hl=en
-- Ken from Chicago (who doesn't know many of the recent American pop /
music celebs and only just aware of "Lauren Conrad" on some MTV show that
just recently ended or about to end)
Ken from Chicago
I think some of the booths DC, Marvel, Microsoft, Sony, etc. have had at
conventions could withstand full-fledged blizzards. You could have a family
of four--or more--living in some of em.
-- Ken from Chicago (whose apartment is smaller than some of those booths)
Kurt Busiek
<kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>
> "Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
> news:h25rlb$usk$1...@solani.org...
>> On 2009-06-27 11:05:19 -0700, "Ken from Chicago"
>> <kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>>
>>>
>>> "Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
>>> news:h25b9s$k3q$1...@solani.org...
>>>> On 2009-06-26 23:21:36 -0700, "Ken from Chicago"
>>>> <kwicker1...@comcast.net> said:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> "Kurt Busiek" <ku...@busiek.com> wrote in message
>>>>> news:h23cak$scf$1...@solani.org...
>>>>>> I don't think I've ever heard an American use the word in casual
>>>>>> speech,
>>>>>> or refer to Ohio's rolling greensward or some other such usage. It's a
>>>>>> word I know, but in a "British English" context.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, like "lorry", "scones" and "fish and chips", I knew of them from
>>>>> watching British shows, DOCTOR WHO, BENNY HILL, THE TWO RONNIES, etc.
>>>>> However I hadn't heard "sward" from British imports and hadn't the
>>>>> terms used here in the States. Mention "fish and chips" to my American
>>>>> friends and they would think of fish and potato chips, not fish and
>>>>> fries--altho
>>>>> Arthur Treacher had the item on sale in Chicago.
>>>>
>>>> You still don't need a glossary in a book for words like "sward" or
>>>> "lorry."
>>>
>>> Sure, you don't, Kurt. Your encyclopedic knowledge and phenomenal recall
>>> is the stuff of legend.
>>
>> No, I have a magic book. It's called a dictionary. I use it to look up
>> words I don't know. American writers sometimes use words I don't know,
>> too, so it's useful for those situations where I need to check the meaning
>> of a word.
>>
>> The idea that you're helpless without a glossary suggests you want to be
>> spoonfed. Maybe you do, but the bulk of readers don't.
>
> Whoa! My bad. I get it now. You are a HOME READER! You read at home. Between
> tv, internet, video games, even the radio, I almost never read fiction at
> home (the ocassion power outage and, well, ahem, the ... "reading throne").
> Since 99.99 % of my fiction reading is on the bus or during lunch breaks,
> dictionaries aren't nearby.
Then you look up the word when you get home.
Or, if you really can't manage to read fiction with any unfamiliar
words in it, you carry a pocket dictionary. You still don't need a
glossary where the writer has to guess which words are unfamiliar to
you and which ones are okay. And what about the next guy, who already
knows some words that you don't, and doesn't know other words that you
do? Should every novel come with a pocket dictionary in the back, just
in case?
It's not only mysterious words about areas that people gallop across in
Tolkein that can be unfamiliar, after all -- the last time I looked up
a word in a book, it was in a Stephen King novel set in Florida.
Should that have had a glossary, even though it wasn't set in an exotic
land and was written by someone who lives fairly near to where I grew
up?
kdb
Ken from Chicago
"P. Taine" <us...@domaine.invalid> wrote in message
news:g61f45h991v29dj3j...@4ax.com...
My bad, I meant to append "and middle of", to refer to movies of the first
half of the 20th century and tv shows in the 50s and 60s. Of course back
then, maps were also a cost saving move so you didn't have to film (as much)
on location.
>>It works great in setting up where everyone is when they are spread out.
-- Ken from Chicago (who recalls many a montage of Our Heroes in some scene
interspersed with an animated line being drawn on from one location to
another on a map)
Kurt Busiek
> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <Xns9C3880FE9C7AAJa...@216.196.109.145>,
>> Johnny Tindalos <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote:
>>>
>>> "Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
>>> tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
>>> round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then
>>> a Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
>>
>> Well, not passing pedestrians, but aircraft flying overhead from one
>> coast to the other.
>>
>> It's a derogatory term, though, and I tried to dissociate myself from
>> it ... it alludes to the fact that Americans on both coasts tend to
>> be more cosmopolitan, because there's more contact with other
>> countries, their inhabitants, their cuisines.
>
> Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
> like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
"Flyover country" refers to the area people in the more populous areas
fly over, not just to the coast. Chicago's a major airline hub and a
population center, so I wouldn't think it would count.
But I doubt it's meant to be a precise description; hard to get those
into two words. It's meant to refer to the area that gets ignored by
the popular media because they so rarely see it; if it only meant "the
coasts," those are two simple enough words by themselves. Except that
a lot of northern California and Oregon are flyover country, as are
swaths of the East Coast.
It's also one of those derogatory terms that cuts both ways -- to the
people flying over, it denotes "unimportant area," to the people who
say things like, "The networks don't care about us Bible-fearing folks
in flyover country," it's a way to say, "Those guys are snooty elites
ignorant of the real country."
kdb
Dorothy J Heydt
W. Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
>Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
>like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
This is why I'm so surprised! Chicago used to be the second
largest city in the US, before Los Angeles overtook it. I
can't wrap my mind around the concept of people in Chicago
not knowing what fish and chips are.
Matthew Malthouse
Heydt) wrote:
> >That's archaic in English English, but persists in place names.
>
> Rotherhythe, e.g., a place in southwest England which gets
> invaded by the Nazis in Forester's "If Hitler Had Invaded
> England."
Indeed, although Rotherhithe on the Thames is now spelled with an i.
There is also Hythe itself, one of the Cinque Ports. There's a modest
number of others too
http://keithbriggs.info/English_placename_element_distribution.html
Matthew
--
Mail to this account goes to the bit bucket.
In the unlikely event you want to mail me replace usenet with my name
Matthew Malthouse
<kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> In books, I'd prefer the map be at the front or back
Me too. Although I've on occasion been ticked off to finish a book
and discover a map at the back that hadn't been advertised! :)
W. Citoan
> In article <slrnh4f1f2....@wcitoan-via.verizon.net>, W.
> Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
> >like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
>
> This is why I'm so surprised! Chicago used to be the second largest
> city in the US, before Los Angeles overtook it. I can't wrap my mind
> around the concept of people in Chicago not knowing what fish and
> chips are.
Did you read the rest of my post? They do know what it is (at least as
much as the rest of the country does). There are fish & chips shops in
Chicago.
Kurt Busiek
> In article <slrnh4f1f2....@wcitoan-via.verizon.net>,
> W. Citoan <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
>> like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
>
> This is why I'm so surprised! Chicago used to be the second
> largest city in the US, before Los Angeles overtook it. I
> can't wrap my mind around the concept of people in Chicago
> not knowing what fish and chips are.
There are some who don't, but there are probably more people in Chicago
who know what hummus is than don't know what fish & chips are.
There are parts of America where people aren't familiar with
extremely-mildly-exotic foods, but Chicago's not a hotbed of them. And
even the ones that are unfamiliar learn by exposure and curiosity (or
they don't), but they don't need book publishers assuming they're
incurious ignorami who can't figure things out from context.
When I was a kid, I didn't know what pemmican and ginger beer were when
I encountered them in children's books. I figured out from context
that "pemmican" was a word they were using to refer to canned meat and
ginger beer was a soft drink, and learned more later -- including that
the kids in the Ransome novels were using "pemmican" to mean canned
corned beef, but that's not what it actually is.
Didn't slow me down reading the novels, though, and I highly doubt kids
in Chicago -- or even Peoria, fabled heartland town ofsong and story --
can't manage fiction without having a glossary.
kdb
Dorothy J Heydt
>
>It's not only mysterious words about areas that people gallop across in
>Should that have had a glossary, even though it wasn't set in an exotic
>land and was written by someone who lives fairly near to where I grew
>up?
The guy who really needs a dictionary attached to his hip is
David Brin. Some of his words can be guessed at if you know
some Greek (atrichic, bromopnean), others are in the
dictionary -- but there are one or two in _The Uplift War_
whose meaning I don't know to this day. (And I've forgotten
what they were.)
[hairless, having bad breath]
Dorothy J Heydt
>entertainment media? When was the last 3 times you've heard the
>phrase "fish
>and chips"?
Let's see. The last time I heard it was about three days ago
when daughter and son-in-law were out at a movie and I was
too tired to cook and my husband suggested he go get
fish'n'chips. There's a very good place about five blocks
from us that sells doughnuts during the day, f'n'c during the
evening.
Oh. Did you mean, when did I last hear f'n'c mentioned on
television? I don't watch television, unless I go upstairs
to the kids' flat and they show me something they've Tivoed.
And even then it's either Mythbusters or Good Eats.
And the latter does have an episode on f'n'c:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY49Xxol_WY
I don't know if the Mythbusters have ever busted any myths
about f'n'c. Are there any?
W. Citoan
> On 2009-06-28 08:01:59 -0700, "W. Citoan" <wci...@NOSPAM-yahoo.com> said:
>
> > Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> >> In article <Xns9C3880FE9C7AAJa...@216.196.109.145>,
> >> Johnny Tindalos <Jama...@UnrealEmail.arg> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> "Flyover Country" sounds very romantic, though. You could have a lost
> >>> tribe of travellers from an antique land hidden under them, squatting
> >>> round stewpots and muttering at the few passing pedestrians, and then
> >>> a Terrible Peril that tracks them down the centuries...
> >>
> >> Well, not passing pedestrians, but aircraft flying overhead from one
> >> coast to the other.
> >>
> >> It's a derogatory term, though, and I tried to dissociate myself from
> >> it ... it alludes to the fact that Americans on both coasts tend to
> >> be more cosmopolitan, because there's more contact with other
> >> countries, their inhabitants, their cuisines.
> >
> > Yeah, because there are no cosmopolitan areas in the middle. Places
> > like Chicago, Saint Louis, Denver, etc. don't exist...
>
> "Flyover country" refers to the area people in the more populous areas
> fly over, not just to the coast. Chicago's a major airline hub and a
> population center, so I wouldn't think it would count.
It does in Dorothy's statement above.
> But I doubt it's meant to be a precise description; hard to get those
> into two words. It's meant to refer to the area that gets ignored by
> the popular media because they so rarely see it; if it only meant "the
> coasts," those are two simple enough words by themselves. Except that
> a lot of northern California and Oregon are flyover country, as are
> swaths of the East Coast.
>
> It's also one of those derogatory terms that cuts both ways -- to the
> people flying over, it denotes "unimportant area," to the people who
> say things like, "The networks don't care about us Bible-fearing folks
> in flyover country," it's a way to say, "Those guys are snooty elites
> ignorant of the real country."
True, but my response wasn't really about that term per se vs. Dorothy's
application of it.