the busy signal: devoted or impish?

Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer, 1979, Chapter 1. Maestro

"Only when a little of the coveted bounty was finally his for the asking - only when it became altogether clear just how stupefyingly unsuited he was to have and to hold anything other than his art - was he inspired to write that brilliant cycle of comic parables (the stories "Revenge," "Lice," "Indiana," "Eppes Essen," and "Adman") in which the tantalized hero does not move to act at all—the tiniest impulse toward amplitude or self-surrender, let alone intrigue or adventure, peremptorily extinguished by the ruling triumvirate of Sanity, Responsibility, and Self-Respect, assisted handily by their devoted underlings: the timetable, the rainstorm, the headache, the busy signal, the traffic jam, and, most loyal of all, the last-minute doubt."


James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, 2011, Prologue

"As the role of information grows beyond anyone's reckoning, it grows to be too much.  "TMI," people now say.  We have information fatigue, anxiety, and glut.  We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.  All this, too, is due in its roundabout way to Shannon.  Everything changed so quickly."


The Underling: A Parallel? A Homage? A Meme?

Whatever it is, I like it.

blazing

Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers, 2013, Chapter 2. Spiritual America

"Only a killjoy would claim neon wasn't beautiful.  It jumped and danced, chasing its own afterimage."

the contrarian's proxy argument

Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1971, Chapter 7.  The Agency

"You are no longer expounding a proposition.  You are having a tantrum.  Simon's psychiatrist and I pursued our tantrum, in duet, all evening long.  The horse might have two natural gaits, the Charleston and the entrechat, for all it mattered.  I meant, I didn't like the man and I thought that, within twenty years, his profession would have vanished, leaving no artifacts of any interest except a dazed memory of fifty years of ineffective and remunerative peculation in the work of a single artist, Freud.  I also meant I didn't like his flowered shirt.  He meant, I think, he didn't like me either."

peculate |ˈpekyəˌlāt|verb [ with obj. ] formalembezzle or steal (money, esp. public funds): the people accused them of having peculated the public money.DERIVATIVESpeculation |ˌpekyəˈlāSHən|noun,peculator |-ˌlātər|nounORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Latin peculat- ‘embezzled,’ from the verbpeculari (related to peculium ‘property’).

recurrent dream

Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1971, Chapter 1. Castling

"I don’t know how many people have ever seen or passed through Broadway Junction. It seems to me one of the world’s true wonders: nine crisscrossing, overlapping elevated tracks, high in the air, with subway cars screeching, despite uncanny slowness, over thick rusted girders, to distant, sordid places. It might have been created by an architect with an Erector Set and recurrent amnesia, and city ordinances and graft, this senseless ruined monster of all subways, in the air."

usufruct, again and again

Maybe DFW read Joan of Arc by Mark Twain.  This is from the endpapaer of one of his notebooks:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/in-the-david-foster-wallace-archives-an-unfinished-story-about-the-internet.html

tin palate

"Against Joie de Vivre" by Philip Lapote, Ploughshares, 1986

"I am saved from such culinary paganism by the fact that food is largely an indifferent matter to me. I rarely think much about what I am putting in my mouth. Though my savage, illiterate palate has inevitably been educated to some degree by the many meals I have shared with people who care enormously about such things, I resist going any further. I am superstitious that the day I send back a dish at a restaurant, or make a complicated journey to somewhere just for a meal, that day I will have sacrificed my freedom and traded in my soul for a lesser god."

http://www2.fiu.edu/~sabar/enc3311/Against%20Joie%20de%20Vivre.pdf

trig

John McPhee, The Control of Nature, 1989, "Cooling the Lava"

The view over the community is of red, green, blue, beige, yellow bright rooftops, walls of oyster and cream.  Silver.  Turquoise.  Copper.  Butter.  It's a trig and colorful, prosperous, handsome town.  There is a house in three shades of green that closely resembles the geologic map of Nebraska.  Its appearance is not singular in Vestrnannaeyjar.

trig 2adjectiveneat and smart in appearance : two trig little boys, each in a gray flannel suit.verb ( trigged , trigging ) [ trans. ]make neat and smart in appearance : he has rigged her and trigged her with paint and spar.ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [faithful, trusty] ): from Old Norse tryggr; related totrue . The current verb sense dates from the late 17th cent.

usufruct - an example

This seems a very good example of usufruct:


"After the Love Is Gone" by Nora Ephron (RIP) September 29, 2005, New York Times

"By the time Bill got involved with Monica, you'd have thought I was past being hurt by him. You'd have thought I'd have shrugged and said, I told you so, you can't trust the guy as far as you can spit. But much to my surprise, Bill broke my heart all over again. I couldn't believe how betrayed I felt. He'd had it all, he'd had everything, and he'd thrown it away, and here's the thing: it wasn't his to throw away. It was ours. We'd given it to him, and he'd squandered it."

The Seal

John McPhee, The Control of Nature, 1989, "Cooling the Lava"

"A year or so later, doctors at the London Hospital Medical College put him in a large tank - he is six feet four and weighs two hundred and seventy-five pounds - and hovered about with miscellaneous sensors while Gudlaugur reposed in water refrigerated to forty-one Fahrenheit degrees.  After an hour, Gudlaugur was bored, and asked for television.  The physiologists concluded that his subcutaneous fat closely resembled a seal's.  In Iceland, where swimming is the national sport, Gudlaugur is not regarded as much of a swimmer.  'He was fat,' said Magnus Magnusson, as he finished his story.  'He was no special swimmer.'"

volte-face

John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, 1977, Chapter 4


"'However,' said Lacon, and to emphasise the volte-face went so far as to arrest Smiley's arm with his long hand so that he had to put down his glass.  'However,' he warned as his erratic voice swooped and rose again, 'whether our masters will swallow all that is quite another matter altogether.'"


volte-face |ˌvält(ə) ˈfäs; ˌvōlt(ə); ˌvôlt(ə)|noun ( pl. same)an act of turning around so as to face in the opposite direction.• an abrupt and complete reversal of attitude, opinion, or position : a remarkable volte-face on taxes.ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from French, from Italian voltafaccia, based on Latin volvere ‘to roll’ + facies ‘appearance, face.’

And: Doughty Smiley!

"Smiley sat in a chair reading the files on his knee like a man in a train, doughtily ignoring the passengers.  Sometimes he lifted his head, but the sounds he heard were not from inside the room."

the lyric of the noun and the verb

MCA died.  R.I.P.  
Someone wrote "Reincarnate Immediately Please"  Yes.


This is from "Get it Together" off of Ill Communication from 1994.
[MCA]
I'm the M to the C to the A and it's a must
The rhymes that we bust on the topic of lust
. . . 
[Q-Tip]
I go one two like my name was Biz Mark 
But I had to do the shit just le t me embark
On the lyric and the noun and the verb
Let's kick the shit off cause yo, I'm not the herb
[Ad Rock]
Well, it's not the herb but the spice with the flavor to spare
The Moog with the funk for your derriere


And then this is from Roberto Bolano, "The Savage Detectives" from 1998.
"Then everything turned into a succession of concrete acts and proper nouns and verbs, or pages from an anatomy manual scattered like flower petals, chaotically linked."

How long does it take?

Check plus for sentences that name the speed of action.


Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851, Chapter XCIII. The Castaway
"Tashtego stood in the bows.  He was full of the fire of the hunt.  He hated Pip for a poltroon.  Snatching the boatknife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?"  Meantime, Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake!  All passed in a flash.  In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved."


David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996, page 609 (see also page 871)
"Hester Thrale now has her pink-nailed hands over her eyes and is screaming over and over for nobody to hurt nobody especially her.  It's the Bulldog Item that holds the attention.  The two guys chasing Lenz around the Montego are unarmed but look coldly determined in a way Gately recognizes.  They're not wearing coats either but they don't look cold.  All this appraisal's taking only seconds; it only takes time to list it."


And here is a different idea that brought to mind the first two:
John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1974, Chapter 37
"There are moments that are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur."

whippowill

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885

Chapter 1. I Discover Moses and the Bullrushers

"Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use.  I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.  The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OreFuVSByE

eremia

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 383
"Donne of course called it lethargie and for a time it seems conjoined somewhat with melancholy, saturninia, otiositas, tristitia - that is, to be confused with sloth and torpor and lassitude and eremia and vexation and distemper and attributed to spleen, for examle see Winchilsea's black jaundice, or of course Burton."


eremia |er-ay-mee'-ah|
a solitude, an uninhabited region, a waste
Etymology:  ecclesistical Greek ἐρημίτης , < ἐρημία a desert, <ἐρῆμος uninhabited.

obtundated

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 365
"'More like stupefied.  They're full-timers.  Glazed.  What's the other word.  Average burn here's three years.  Obtundated is the word."


obtundation  |ob′tundā′shən|

a greatly reduced level of consciousness. The patient is not yet comatose but is close, arousing only with very strong stimulus.

Etymology: L, obtundere, to blunt, atus, process

Baker-Miller pink

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 312
"Two walls' paneling painted over in Baker-Miller pink."

http://www.colourlovers.com/color/FF91AF/Baker_Miller_Pink


and


http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/08/Tampabay/Gritty_and_pink.shtml

banausic

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 229

“Continuing on without pause, he said, ‘Exacting?  Prosaic?  Banausic to the point of drudgery?  Sometimes.  Often tedious?  Perhaps.  But brave?  Worthy?  Fitting, sweet?  Romantic?  Chivalric?  Heroic?’”


banausic |bəˈnôzik; -sik|adjective formalnot operating on a refined or elevated level; mundane.• relating to technical work.ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Greek banausikos ‘of or for artisans.’

semions

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 73

“Our mutual contract here is based on the presumptions of (a) my veracity, and (b) your understanding that any features or semions that might appear to undercut that veracity are in fact protective legal devices, not unlike the boilerplate that accompanies sweepstakes and civil contracts, and thus are not meant to be decoded or ‘read’ so much as merely acquiesced to as part of the cost of our doing business together, so to speak, in today’s commercial climate.


semion
A semion is technically part of an anyon, the latter of which is defined in the OED as "a particle having characteristics intermediate between those of fermions and bosons in two-dimensional space." However, it seems Wallace uses the word as a form closer to "semiotics." A later search reveals that semion is Greek for "sign."

From the Infinite Jest wiki:
http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Pages_87-127

swivet

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 70 F.N.
“The latter is a good example of the sort of thing that threw the publisher’s legal people into a swivet of anality and caution.


swivet |ˈswivit|noun [in sing. ]a fluster or panic : the incomprehensible did not throw him into a swivet.ORIGIN late 19th cent.: of unknown origin.

usufruct

Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, 1896, page 83

“It was a fine thing to see how that young swashbuckler had made himself so popular in a strange land in so little a while, and without other helps to his advancement than just his tongue and the talent to use it given him by God – a talent which was but one talent in the beginning, but was now become ten through husbandry and the increment and usufruct that do naturally follow that and reward it as by a law.”


usufruct |ˈyoōzəˌfrəkt; -sə-|noun Roman Lawthe right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from medieval Latin usufructus, from Latin usus (et) fructus ‘use (and) enjoyment,’ fromusus ‘a use’ + fructus ‘fruit.’