Reading: Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge, and Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose.

Learning: the etymology of "chauvinism."

Listening: "Rescue Me"

Viewing: A full moon

23 November 1999: Charter Oak

Two more people in my department offered me the Connecticut quarter. Perhaps I should feign ignorance every time for monetary if not chauvinistic* reasons.

*Hey, I just looked up the word "chauvinism" to learn its origins. Now I'm going to be anxious until I remember what the word is for words taken from people's names, more specific than "eponymous." I wonder if "chauvinism" properly is one, since it's from a fictional character, like a malapropism. Anyway, I thought "chauvinism" might be related to "cheval" and manly or military equine stuff. Nonesuch. From Merriam-Webster's Word Histories (thanks to ABW, who worked there): "Nicolas Chauvin...was a French solder ridiculed for his extreme patriotism and fervent devotion to Napoleon." Was he fictional, or just fictionalized? That book doesn't say. The Merriam-Webster dictionary origin is why I wondered if he's entirely made up or based on someone real: "[C]haracter noted for his excessive patriotism and devotion to Napoleon in Theodore and Hippolyte Cogniard's play "La cocarde tricolore" (1831), 1870. There are three definitions, of which male chauvinism is the most recent, appearing in the files first in 1950.

Two of the three people who've offered me quarters, from Montana and Vermont, suggested themselves (on their own and without my prompting) that Connecticut's is the best quarter so far. Of course. And I got to explain the Charter Oak's significance.

I have to go to the library today or Wednesday to renew my books--as I predicted, I finished the six Betsy-Tacy books but only two f the other five--Making History and The Life of God as Told by Himself. I decided not even to try Pale Fire because I do need a Norton or some other critical edition of Nabokov. And I have started The Name of the Rose. I know I'll really enjoy the Mary Queen of Scots novel, but it's a treat for after Eco. My current excuse for Eco is to read Forbidden Knowledge again; it fell by the wayside for Fry and Ferrucci but I want to finish it without two months of starting it. Also I'm reading Swallows and Amazons to RDC.

RDC skipped from Seuss and Sendak to Poe and Portnoy's Complaint. As such, I have sought to fix some of his broken areas. The first book I read to him was The Phantom Tollbooth. Then, on a long drive to Pittsburgh for a wedding, Alice in Wonderland downloaded from Project Gutenberg and read from our (his) first PowerBook. Then Watership Down and To Kill a Mockingbird.

"He hadn't read To Kill a Mockingbird?"exclaimed HAO. "What kind of high school did he go to?" My kind, sadly. I didn't read it for high school either. During, but not in. Nor Silas Marner. Nor Huck. I didn't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn until 1990 or '91.

I can understand RDC not loving Jane Austen. Or forgive it, if I can't understand it. But I don't know how anyone can be an English major without Alice and I maintain that no one can understand me without also knowing Scout & Jem & Atticus and Hazel & Fiver & Blackberry.

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When PLT acknowledged Speaking Confidentially after knowing about it for "I don't know, a year?" he said he didn't read it because, agreeing with me, we have drifted, and also because he doesn't know the people involved.

Well, I don't know M or Jeremy or Julie myself, but I'm still interested in Shelley and Beth and Rob. This could mean either that PLT has no interest in this sort of writing (nor does RDC) or I do not write compelling enough to hold his interest (probable).

Anyway, whether or not he reads my escribitionism, he has gone through a lot of my pages and his early-September acknowledgment took the form of nitpicking the name of the Sting movie I saw the night I first saw an episode of "Moonlighting" (is a movie title completely extraneous to the Moonlighting experience? CLH would say yes) and that our friend pronounced "kneel" is Neal not Neil. Yesterday he corrected my spelling of the author of Class, who takes two l's in his Fussell.

When it was obvious he was poking about, I saved him the trouble of looking for his name (or initials) and told him the one and only time I've mentioned him besides his introductory paragraph. I wonder if his suggestion of a concordance (most often called a search function by other escribitionists) stemmed from his wondering how else I've mentioned him. Well. The surprise party isn't the only time I mentioned him, but when I referred to NCS's reading my offline journal or to why I enjoy "That '70s Show," naming PLT as an individual is secondary to my purpose. The party was the only time I've alluded to the last tremor in the continental drift of our friendship.

In sum, this whole site, but particularly Speaking Confidentially, now presents (exposes?) to him a whole nother new range of my inadequacies, emotional as well as orthographic. So what I'm debating is explaining the incident. Pre-emptive retaliation. I've nothing to retaliate against, though, not now, not rationally, except my own reflexive defensive protectiveness of my self-worth.