Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It’s the outcue for the audio column on NPR’s Morning Edition that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper published a book of his, by that title. It’s in the same warm memory set as hearing Ellen Gilchrist, in the same years and the same time of day.
“Outcue.” The spellcheck dings it, and it’s not in Webster’s New World, but from my time in radio I can attest it’s real. It is a term for the phrase a broadcast journalist uses, with some consistency, that flags the producer at the home studio to open the mike for the anchor to resume. “Reporting from Fayetteville, this is Ben Pollock.” “And that’s the way it is.” Ciardi might have said if he lived into the Clinton presidential years, “Yes, that’s what ‘is’ is. This is John Ciardi, wishing Good Words to You.”
On the night stand is Let Me Finish by Roger Angell (Harcourt, 2006). It’s a collection of reminiscences, more than a well-transitioned memoir. It’s the first book in a long time that has challenged me to hit the dictionary. Angell is not trying to be Safire, nor is he one to prefer the ol’ 25-cent words over nickel ones. He simply is addressing general topics in a sophisticated way. Also, people once used larger words. I’m also working on Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, where the self-educated Abe Lincoln, speaking to the commonest of common folk, used a vocabulary that would stump today’s wannabe gang-banger. It’s fun to learn something new.
Angell is best known for magazine articles on baseball, but he’s been a longtime writer and editor at The New Yorker. Aha! He is the son of noted editor Katherine Angell and stepson of E.B. White. Aha aha! Big words. No, “Andy” White does not approve of big words in his Elements of Style. But if you read his smooth essays elsewhere, Mr. White used a nice vocabulary well.
Riposte. Persiflage. Bushwa. Purdah. These are Angell’s words that stumped me. Here’s what they mean. Sharp retort. Frivolous writing or speaking. Nonsense. Secluding women from the outside world.
Let’s try these words out: A clever riposte is impossible to the president’s response of persiflage when asked about oppression by purdah. Bushwa, all agree.
Commonplace book. I know this one. I should post mine, but am not sure of the best format. After all, it’s not a book, and these days not commonplace either. Reading someone’s commonplace book is a cross between checking out a person’s book, video or audio collection, and out-and-out snooping in a diary. It’s a collection of a person’s favorite sayings, maxims, quotes of others that ring true, that sort of thing.
A small sample has been on my site for a long time.
Here is an addition for mine, from Angell’s book. He recalls editing a piece by fellow New Yorker staffer William Maxwell, a novelist who edited Cheever and Welty, among others. Here’s why: Maxwell says after Angell gives up trying to fix one of his sentences: “I don’t want to be too clear.”
Amen, brother. -30-
