Reading: Word Freak

Watching: photography

Moving: walked 7 miles

22 September 2002: Weekend

Today we slept late, me less so and reading Word Freak from within the cozy bed. We finally got out of the house at noon, walking downtown to the art museum, whose photography exhibit is closing next Saturday. I'd seen it twice already, but RDC hadn't and I wanted to see it with him.

(Boy howdy, am I going to miss being able to go the museum during my lunch hour. Saturdays are free, so it's maybe more crowded than Sundays, plus it was the penultimate weekend.)

Afterward we walked down to the Market, where I had my usual basil penne and RDC shrimp salad on sourdough, then we shared a disappointing thing that called itself a torte but was yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Then we walked home: maybe seven miles altogether. A lovely fall day.

Then we spent the evening at the dining table with laptops, not playing boat downstairs. RDC did whatever he did and I backed up my files and played Scrabble against myself (I'm reading Word Freak) and we listened to NPR online.

I shouldn't be disappointed in the contents of Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak, whose very title describes a person, not a game, and whose subtitle mentions heartbreak, triumph, genius, and obsession without an iota about strategy or technique. It's an ethnography about the author as much as about his human subjects and much more than it is about the game. Strategy is probably too technical a subject for a reader who hasn't memorized word lists.

(Now it's Sunday morning. New York Times, tea, still no orange juice, it's not 50 degrees outside 2.5 hours after sunrise, and though it's not actually cold in the house, it feels cold. So I said, "Brrrr! It's cold in here! There must be some clover in the atmosphere!" which proves, as if the situation needed more proof, that my online habit has warped my brain. Or it could be that I have just read about Fatsis's desperate two opening moves in one game, BRR and then "hooking" an R for BRRR.

Also, the other day I asked to borrow someone's stapler, excusing myself thusly: "Dingoes ate my stapler.")

My game, OMFB.

RDC decided the most pathetic thing about the players is that when they say "nice rack," they're referring to the tray of seven letters. He was probably shocked into saying this because he has never heard me utter that phrase before. I used RDC's Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate, because my tenth was allll the way down in my study.

Then I very happily packed up the game.

Meanwhile we were listening to a March 2002 "Talk of the Nation" about the 100 top fictional characters of the 20th century. When RDC told me the topic I argh'd, asked who'd compiled it, and snickered again, because I have no high opinion of Book magazine. Before he read me the list I guessed some: Atticus Finch, Jake Barnes, Benjy Compson, Scarlett O'Hara.

When I realized that Talk of the Nation meant audience participation, I tossed out names based on the Modern Library readers' list of the 100 best books of the century: Howard Roark, I predicted; and Nick Andros from The Stand; and whoever from Stranger in a Strange Land. RDC reminded me it was NPR, and he was right: callers suggested Howard Roark, Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, Sam Gamgee, Atticus Finch, Scarlett O'Hara.

  1. Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
  2. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
  3. Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
  4. Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
  5. Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960
  6. Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
  7. Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
  8. Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
  9. Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916
  10. Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905
  11. Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote, 1958
  12. Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915
    At this point I yelled loudly. If this list, whose criteria I didn't know, included non-English-language books, there ought to be a large proportion of non-English characters. Don't those furriners write books too?
  13. The Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
  14. Lolita, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
  15. Aureliano Buendia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
    I like José Arcadia, the patriarch. Or Melquíades. Two non-English.
  16. Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, 1925
  17. Ignatius Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
  18. George Smiley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarré, 1974
  19. Mrs. Ramsay, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927
  20. Bigger Thomas, Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940
  21. Nick Adams, "In Our Time," Ernest Hemingway, 1925
  22. Yossarian, Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961
  23. Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
  24. Scout Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
  25. Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 1939
  26. Kurtz, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902
  27. Stevens, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
    I sighed happily.
  28. Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino, 1957
    Three.
  29. Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926
  30. Oskar Matzerath, The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, 1959
    Four
  31. Hazel Motes, "Wise Blood," Flannery O'Connor, 1952
  32. Alex Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, 1969
  33. Binx Bolling, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy, 1961*
  34. Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
  35. Jeeves, "My Man Jeeves," P.G. Wodehouse, 1919
  36. Eugene Henderson, Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 1959*
  37. Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, 1913-1927
    Five
  38. Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 1908
    I love Ratty and Toad's car-driving and being arrested always made me sad, but I have to agree he's the more memorable.
  39. The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 1955
  40. Peter Pan, The Little White Bird, J.M. Barrie, 1902
  41. Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985
  42. Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930
  43. Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 1985
    He'd better be some damn memorable to be here instead of Alejandra's grandmother.
  44. Willie Stark, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, 1946
    Haitch gave this to me for my birthday. Last year. I suck.
  45. Stephen Maturin, Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian, 1969
  46. The Little Prince, The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943
     Six
  47. Santiago, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 1952
  48. Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
  49. The Whiskey Priest, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene, 1940
  50. Neddy Merrill, The Swimmer, John Cheever, 1964
  51. Sula Peace, Sula, Toni Morrison, 1973
  52. Meursault, The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942
    Seven
  53. Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926
  54. Phoebe Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
    If my hypothetical dog weren't named after my library, I'd name it after her instead.
  55. Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
    One of the reasons Jane is among my favorite names.
  56. Ántonia Shimerda, My Ántonia, Willa Cather, 1918
  57. Grendel, Grendel, John Gardner, 1971
  58. Gulley Jimson, The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary, 1944
    Neither of us has ever heard of this book or author.
  59. Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell, 1949
  60. Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, 1955
  61. Seymour Glass, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger, 1953
  62. Dean Moriarty, On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
  63. Charlotte, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, 1952
  64. T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp, John Irving, 1978
  65. Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, 1934
    Is this one person?
  66. James Bond, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953
  67. Mr. Bridge, Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, 1959
  68. Geoffrey Firmin, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 1947*
  69. Benjy, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
  70. Charles Kinbote, Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962
  71. Mary Katherine Blackwood, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, 1962
  72. Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
  73. Claudine, Claudine at School, Colette, 1900
    Eight, though I count 1900 as belonging to the 19th century.
  74. Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1985
    Nine
  75. George Follansbee Babbitt, Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 1922
    Memorable? Hardly. Memorably tedious.
  76. Christopher Tietjens, Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford, 1924-28*
  77. Frankie Addams, "The Member of the Wedding," Carson McCullers, 1946
  78. The Dog of Tears, Blindness, José Saramago, 1995
    Ten, I'm guessing. Yes, it's Portugese and available in English. Neither of us had heard of book or author either and it sounds really good.
  79. Tarzan, Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914
  80. Nathan Zuckerman, My Life As a Man, Philip Roth, 1979
  81. Arthur "Boo" Radley, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
  82. Henry Chinaski, Post Office, Charles Bukowski, 1971
  83. Joseph K., The Trial, Franz Kafka, 1925
    Eleven
  84. Yuri Zhivago, Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, 1957
    Twelve
  85. Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1998
  86. Hana, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 1992
  87. Margaret Schlegel, Howards End, E.M. Forster, 1910
  88. Jim Dixon, Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis, 1954
  89. Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair, Graham Greene, 1951
  90. Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 1937
  91. Mr. Biswas, A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul, 1961*
  92. Alden Pyle, The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 1955
  93. Kimball "Kim" O'Hara, Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 1901
  94. Newland Archer, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 1920
  95. Clyde Griffiths, An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 1925
  96. Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926
  97. Quentin Compson, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
    Which one?
  98. Charlie Marlow, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902
  99. Celie, The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982
  100. Augie March, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow 1953*

* Albatross from the Modern Library list. Some others from that list might not be starred, e.g. Ulysses or American Tragedy--the former because I look forward to reading it and the latter because I look forward to never reading it.

Bigwig. Samuel Hamilton. Tock. Owen Meany. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Sunny Baudelaire. Donald "Sully" Sullivan. Iorek Byrnison.

Another gorgeous day. A late start meant no Golden Gate Canyon, but we strolled here and there, picked up groceries including orange juice (clearly my life's blood), and I might have found a denim skirt. We saw a Lexus SUV being valet-parked at Whole Foods whose license plate read MY LEXXY.

We were near enough a Build-a-Bear store that we saw several people with that store's boxes. With, presumably, bears smothering to death inside. That's a minor reason I don't like that store. The major reason is the whole Frankensteinian, God-playing bit. I suppose I prefer to see my bears sprung whole in a parthenogenesis kind of way on a shelf. I don't want to see bear bits. Or eyeless faces. Maybe the store doesn't have such monstrosities, but I will never venture into one to find out yea or nay.

RDC liked that store. I raised an eyebrow, because he's never been in (or near). He said if he ever built a bear, he'd use...badger bits, and penguin parts, and oddments of otters. I supplied the consonance, but he's the one with the sicko mind. Also he says he'd call it Adam, but he wasn't thinking of Genesis or Shelley but of Buffy.

---

Oh cool. I'm watching "The Yoko Factor," and I'm here to tell you that Angel and Riley fighting is not nearly as sexy as Buffy and Faith fighting.

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Last modified 21 September 2002

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