Word: reader
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...reader, though he may never decide whether or not Diddy left his seat, knows right off what his problem is: alienation. "Diddy merely inhabits his life," the author says. "One can redeem skeletons and abandoned cities as human. But not a lost, dehumanized nature." God knows Diddy tries. He falls in love with the blind girl, marries her in an attempt to help them both...
Unquestionably, Susan Sontag tries too. The novel is arduously worked out, with the author always at the reader's elbow, adding explanations ("to a man wielding a microscope, his own seeing eyes are blind"), pointing out high spots, summing up. The only thing she could do (now) to help the book would be to write one of her well-reasoned essays to explain why she wrote...
This is a book for the tired scientist, mathematician or logician. But the word games that Dmitri Borgmann has collected for his trip into the secret world beyond language also can be played by the ordinary reader, particularly if he is a genius...
...take a Borgmann favorite, the etymological redundancy - ouija, for example, which consists of the French oin and the German ja, both meaning yes. What about a quadruple redundancy? For a hint, Borgmann aims his reader toward southwest England. After a few dutiful hours of brain racking, it is permissible to turn to the answers in the back of the book. In The Story of English, writes Borgmann, Mario Pei mentions a ridge near Plymouth called Torpenhow Hill. "This name consists of the Saxon tor, the Celtic pen, the Scandinavian haugr (later transformed into how) and the Middle English hill...
...reader who has not drowned in this think tank will be shown how to compose a sentence that ends with nine prepositions ("What did you bring the book that I do not wish to be read on to out of up from Down Under for?"). He will also be given the correct term for a 1 28th note in music (quasihemidemisemiquaver, or semi-hemidemisemiquaver). Good sport that he is, Borgmann asks his fans for suggestions. How about this: What is the significance of this series: 8, 14, 23, 28, 34, 42, 49, 57? Hint: any straphanger on the New York...